Bank Job

by Robert L. Fish

  “He seems to have an alibi,” Reardon said stubbornly, “for that monkey business in Florida, and the murder of the other two in Arizona. But he doesn’t have a trace of a one for the time of the bank robbery.”

  “Except he doesn’t have to prove he wasn’t at the bank,” Tower pointed out. “We have to prove that he was.” He leaned over and picked up a pencil, but merely to have something to twiddle as he thought. Then he shook his head, but positively this time. “No. It would still be a mistake to arrest this man Gilchrist with what we have right now. I’ll make a concession, though: you give me the answers to three questions and I’ll have the San Mateo police pick him up.”

  Reardon waited.

  “First,” Tower said, as if tired of repeating himself, “is the old one: why would four men in their positions do it? Second, if one of them needed money, and they did it together in a spirit of old war comradeship, as you seem to think, why would Gilchrist kill the two who helped him? Three—”

  “In answer to two,” Reardon said, interrupting, “maybe—or almost surely—Gilchrist was the one who needed the money. But the others wanted their share whether they needed it or not. After all, why turn down sixty thousand dollars, no matter how much you already have, especially if you’ve earned it?”

  “No,” Tower said positively. “I don’t buy it, and no jury would, either. Either they’re all such dyed-in-the-wool close friends and pals they’d do this together, even though it was damned dangerous and potentially suicidal, or they’re men who would kill each other for each other’s share, in which case they wouldn’t have trusted each other enough to work together in the first place. You can’t have it both ways.” The captain seemed to realize the complex nature of his explanation. “Maybe I don’t make it too clear, but any defense attorney would.”

  It made sense, Reardon had to admit. “All right, sir. What about question number three?”

  “Three,” Tower said evenly. “How did Gilchrist manage to burn those papers in Florida? How did he kill those two in Arizona? If he had accomplices—which is hard to believe—who are they? And how do you prove it? And how do you identify them? If he didn’t have accomplices, how did he manage to be in two places at the same time?”

  Reardon failed to point out that the original three questions had blossomed into eight. It didn’t mean much, however, since he didn’t have an answer to any of them. He sighed and came to his feet, moving toward the door.

  “Dondero’s getting some rest down in the gym, Captain. As soon as he’s on his feet we’ll go down to San Mateo. I want to speak with the police there, myself. I checked and they still have a man on Gilchrist, but they think we’re crazy, so I don’t know how wide-awake their tail is, and a bad tail is worse than none. I’ll also try and talk to the security force at that steel factory where Gilchrist works. I’d bet there must be fifty ways to get out of a factory without being spotted, especially if you have a top executive job and don’t have to knock out x number of widgets per hour under some foreman’s nose.” He shook his head, his jaw tight, weariness marking his face. “Damn it, there has to be an answer!”

  “There usually is, if you ask the right questions,” Tower said quietly, and switched off his cassette tape-recorder. Reardon nodded and left the room, heading back to his own office. He wondered if the captain had purposely left the recorder on to the last moment in order to catch that final bit of deathless cliché; then he silently apologized to his superior. Tower, after all, was the one principally responsible for the arrest and conviction of whoever had robbed that bank and killed Tom Wheaton. And all that he, Reardon, had done so far was to spend one large chunk of the taxpayer’s money flying back and forth to nowhere, and in an expensive chartered jet, no less! He sighed and turned into his office.

  Sergeant Jennings was busy cleaning house, a chore he bravely assumed for himself every six months or so. The office closet had been emptied and its contents scattered haphazardly on any bearing surface in order to allow the sergeant to dust the shelves and sweep the corners diligently before returning everything to its former state of clutter. The sergeant looked up as Reardon came in.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” he said cheerfully—cheerfully because in the first place, Sergeant Jennings actually enjoyed the job of cleaning the closet, and secondly, because he had a nutty message for the lieutenant, and nutty messages always broke the monotony. He gestured toward the phone with his head. “You just got a call from some weirdo.”

  “Oh?” Reardon paused, suspecting the worst. “Who?”

  “He didn’t leave his name,” Jennings said. “All he said was—hold it, I wrote it all down like he said I should.” He fished in his pockets, coming up with a slip of paper, reading it. “He said to tell Lieutenant Reardon that so far as he was able to find out sniffing around the stables, the three Gs didn’t seem to have been nosing around any of the local or Vegas feedboxes.” Jennings put the paper away and frowned, perplexed. “He must have meant gee-gees, not Gs, huh, Lieutenant? That means horses,” he added, proud of his knowledge.

  “That’s what he must have meant,” Reardon said absently, and frowned. Usually Porky Oliver’s messages, complicated more for fun than security, were a source of amusement; at the moment this particular one merely irritated. So Porky had been unable to come up with any evidence of any big-time gambling on the part of any one of the three, not that it made much difference as far as Glass and Grube were concerned. But a lead on Gilchrist would have been encouraging, if nothing more. Damn!

  Jennings said, “What’d he mean, no horses have been nosing around the feedboxes, Lieutenant?”

  “He meant they weren’t hungry, damn it!” Reardon said. The look on his face stopped Jennings from pursuing the matter further; the sergeant shrugged and returned to his dusting, then paused again. This time he gestured with his hand duster in the direction of Reardon’s desk.

  “Hey, Lieutenant, I meant to ask—did you ever get around to reading my report on all those statements you made everybody write down over at that bank?”

  “No,” Reardon said truthfully. “Should I?”

  “Well,” Jennings said, his feelings slightly hurt, “after all, I had to wade through all those papers and try to read them, and then I had to pick out anything different from what we already knew from that TV tape, and then I had to write it all down in longhand first to make sure it was right, and then I had to type it, and that typewriter—”

  “Stop!” Reardon said, forced to smile. “You’re breaking my heart. All right, I’ll read the thing. If you’ll clear away enough of this mess so I can use my desk.”

  “Oh, sure, Lieutenant, right away,” Jennings said instantly, and began by removing a pile of cardboard storage files from the top of the desk and jamming them back into the closet. The suitcase used in the robbery was sitting athwart the lieutenant’s swivel chair and Reardon handed it to Jennings, who shoved it on top of everything else in the closet. Reardon had to grin. Fibber McGee would be right at home here, he thought, and came around his desk to sit down.

  Jennings had centered his report neatly on top of the other papers on the desk and Reardon, glancing at it, had to admire the other’s persistence, if not his typing ability. He looked up to find Jennings watching for his reaction; he wiped away any sign of a smile and got down to the serious business of reading the report.

  It was, as he had feared, a lot of nothing, but he could scarcely put it aside with the sergeant’s mournful, beagle-like eyes upon him. Anyway, he thought, it was only three pages long; he might as well wade through it. He completed the first page, forcing himself to read each word, flipped the sheet over and started on the second. He came to the bottom of the sheet and was about to turn it when a sentence caught his eye. He hastily read the third page and then returned to the second, rereading it in its entirety. His eyes came up.

  “Jennings, what did you do with the originals?”

  The sergeant brightened. “You mean you found something useful, Lieutenan
t?”

  “Maybe,” Reardon said. “Where are the originals?” A thought was forming in his head, and if it was correct, he had been one damned fool. He took the folder Jennings handed him and leafed through it, finding the ones he wanted. He read them carefully, struggling through the calligraphy, and put them down. Jennings watched him awhile, but the lieutenant was so silent, so absorbed in his thoughts that Jennings lost interest. He went back to his closet arranging, moving quietly so as not to disturb the lieutenant.

  Reardon frowned at his desk without seeing it. It was odd how one tiny fact could lead the mind to a second and then on to a third. That little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand … He could, he thought, be wrong of course—the chances were he was—no, damn it, the chances were that he was right. If so, he had the answers, not only to one of the captain’s questions, but probably to all of them. Unfortunately, he still lacked proof! He turned and stared thoughtfully at the closet, whose door Jennings was just closing gently.

  “Jennings, one more thing. I want the transcript of that statement the intern from Mary’s Help Hospital gave; the one he taped while I was down in Daly City. Do you have it?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant,” Jennings said, proud of his filing system and rightly so. “It’s a copy but it’s accurate.”

  The sergeant proudly pulled open a file drawer, located the proper folder at once, and removed the typed transcript. Reardon took it and read it slowly, his eyes narrowing as he went through it. “Dumb!” he said under his breath, and leaned back in his chair, looking at the sergeant.

  “Jennings,” he said, “over in Prescott, Arizona, this morning, I told Dondero there are none so blind as those who would not see—”

  “Hey!” Jennings said, beaming, pleased to be taken into his superior’s confidence, “that’s good, Lieutenant!”

  “Yes,” Reardon said, speaking more to himself than to the other. “Only I was talking to the wrong man. I should have been talking to myself.” He put his hand out for the telephone and then paused. One of the rules was that he was never to call Porky Oliver from the Hall of Justice. Well, this would have to be that famous exception; there just wasn’t time to chase down to the lobby or out to a drugstore for a public phone. Still, a little privacy could and would be assured. “Jennings, go down and get yourself a cup of coffee.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant, but I just had one a little while ago—”

  “Jennings,” Reardon said, biting each word, “go to the men’s room!”

  “But I don’t need—oh, sure, Lieutenant. Sure!”

  “And close the door after you,” Reardon said shortly, waited until it was closed, and then dialed. The telephone rang endlessly at the other end. With a bitter glare Reardon hung up and dialed the number again, hoping he had erred the first time, but there was still no answer. The lieutenant checked his watch and dialed a second number, thinking that things must be pretty bad if Porky started to get up before noon. This time the telephone was answered almost at once. A familiar gravel voice was on the line.

  “Sawicki Pool Hall.”

  “Is Porky Oliver there?”

  “Naw, you missed him. He was here fifteen, twenty minutes ago, but he ain’t here now.”

  Reardon said a nasty word. “Do you have any idea where he can be reached?”

  “I ain’t his secretary,” the gravel voice said. “You want to leave a message?”

  “When do you expect him back?”

  “When he shows,” the gravel voice said. “He don’t tell me. Like I said, you want to leave a message? You’re holding up a eight-ball game.”

  “Skip it,” Reardon said disgustedly, and hung up. He frowned at the closed closet door a few moments more and then reached for the telephone again. He couldn’t be wrong; it was the only answer that made any sense. But he still had to get that proof the captain rightly insisted upon, and unfortunately it was Saturday. And who worked on Saturday outside of cops and streetcar conductors? Still, he had to give it that old school try. He raised the phone and clicked it for inside. Communications came on at once.

  “Yes?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Sergeant Silvestre, sir.”

  Reardon wondered if the sergeant also worked twenty-four hours a day and then dropped the thought, happy that Silvestre was on duty. If anyone could dig out the information he needed, the sergeant could.

  “Sergeant,” Reardon said, “I need some information and I need it in a hurry. I know it’s Saturday and undoubtedly all offices in Washington, D.C., are closed, but I still need this information. Do you suppose you could try to locate somebody in authority in the Personnel Department of the Pentagon and have him get somebody to dig through some old records for me? Today? It’s important.”

  Silvestre frowned. “Wasn’t the information they sent complete, sir?”

  Reardon stared at the telephone in surprise. “What information?”

  “Don’t you remember, sir?” Silvestre asked. “We put through an inquiry—when was it?—asking about the crew of that helicopter gunship this man Mullin was attached to. Don’t you remember?”

  “I do now,” Reardon said, mentally kicking himself. “What about it?”

  “I put a copy of their reply on top of your desk just this morning, Lieutenant. Didn’t you see it?”

  “No,” Reardon said, “but I will. If I need more I’ll be back to you. And thanks.”

  He hung up and studied the top of his desk. The paper facing him had been hidden by Jennings’ report. He picked up the teletyped message with fingers that were suddenly tense; if it merely contained the information he had already received from Sheriff Holden in Florida, then it was practically useless. But if, by some miracle, they had read more into his request for information than he had actually stated, then, maybe …

  He brought the message to eye level quickly, first scanning it and then reading in greater detail what he had hoped to see. He placed it on his desk and smoothed it while he took a deep breath.

  “Perfect! Win, place, and show!” he said with deep satisfaction, and reached for the telephone again. A pity Jennings wasn’t there to give his statement its proper equine interpretation. “Silvestre? No, not Washington. Instead, get me whoever’s in charge down at the San Mateo Police, would you? Right away?”

  “Two seconds,” Silvestre said cheerfully, and cut the lieutenant off. Reardon waited impatiently, his hand taut on the cold plastic of the receiver, waiting for the ring, his mind going over all the steps of the things that had to be done. When at last his call came through, he had his plan of action all worked out. The voice at the other end was expressionless.

  “Inspector Wallington,” the strange voice said. “What can we do for you, Lieutenant?”

  Reardon took a breath and said, “You have a man covering a certain Will Gilchrist at our request—”

  “We have,” the inspector said, his tone clearly indicating just what he thought of such nonsense. “What about it?”

  “Where is he now? Gilchrist, I mean?”

  “Asleep, I imagine. Our man called in less than fifteen minutes ago,” the inspector said, his voice clearly indulging the officer from the big city. “At that time Gilchrist was at home. He’s just bought this new condominium and he’s getting it ready. He’s getting married pretty soon.”

  Reardon doubted that final bit like hell, but he made no comment on Gilchrist’s marital plans. Instead, he asked, “Whereabouts is this condominium?”

  “A new development called Sherwood Forest.” The inspector was beginning to get bored. “Your man Dondero knows where it is. I showed him the house myself the other night.” He thought a moment. “Last night.”

  Reardon decided to make it swift and hard in a tone that would brook no argument. “All right, Inspector, I want a second man on Gilchrist’s house, one at the back, and tell both of them to be on their toes. I don’t want him leaving under any circumstances; they can use force to keep him there if they have to. I’ll be there as soon
as I can make it. Understand?”

  If the San Mateo inspector was impressed by the toughness of Reardon’s voice, he certainly didn’t show it. Instead, he sounded rather amused, in the fashion of a police officer seeing a poor imitation of himself in a movie.

  “If you say so, Lieutenant. We were told to co-operate. Will you stop in at our headquarters first?”

  “I’ll go right to Gilchrist’s,” Reardon said tightly.

  “Maybe I’ll meet you there—” the inspector started to say, but he was speaking to a dial tone. He hung up, sighed, and came to his feet. What this nut from San Francisco wanted was ridiculous, of course, but instructions were instructions and besides, Inspector Wallington was willing to give the lieutenant ample rope; it would be pleasant to see a big shot from the big town hang himself. Will Gilchrist, for God’s sake! Wallington bowled for the Police League and had come head to head with Gilchrist on the alleys many a time. He gave orders for someone to take over his duties for the afternoon and walked out to his car. He supposed he’d better be the second man himself, to be at hand when this maniac from San Francisco came down; otherwise the dumb bastard might shoot somebody, or himself, in the foot.

  At the Hall of Justice Reardon put the receiver down in time to hear a diffident knocking on the door. He raised his voice. “Come in!”

  Jennings peered about the threshold. “I went to the men’s room, Lieutenant—”

  “Fine!” Reardon said. “Now go down to the gym and kick Dondero awake. Tell him to meet me at my car in exactly two minutes. I’ve got one more call to make and then I’ll be down.” His voice turned grim. “And tell him to be damn sure his service revolver is loaded and handy. We’re going down to visit his old friend in San Mateo!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Saturday—1:50 P.M.

  The designers of Sherwood Forest had apparently not considered trees a necessary part of a forest atmosphere, for the few that had been there when the development was started had been uprooted to make way for scattered side-by-side two-family units that faced every which way in a feeble attempt to instill a sense of individuality in what was, essentially, dreary conformity. In addition they had mistakenly turned to Grimm’s tales for a model, because the houses looked more as if they had come from Hansel and Gretel than from Robin Hood. They all had steeply peaked roofs more suitable to eastern snows than Peninsula fog, shingles which were intentionally made to look as if they were about to fall off (which Reardon suspected they often did), plus a type of roofing made to imitate original thatch, and which looked almost as revolting as the real thing.