The Watcher (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Read online

  I turned to Darrell. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

  Quickly, he shook his head. Already he was moving toward the service entrance. Obscurely pleased, I unlocked the door and switched on two bare bulbs that illuminated a long alleyway leading along the building’s garage area to a small rear courtyard. The building contained four two-bedroom apartments on the two upper floors, and a four-car garage on the ground floor. Behind the garage were storage cubicles, a utility room and refuse containers. Two small doors opened off the alleyway. The first door led to the tenants’ storage area. The second door opened on the utility room.

  Leading the way along the building to the small rear courtyard, Towne pointed to a cyclone fence on the rear property line. The woven wire gate set into the fence was secured by an oversize padlock.

  “What happened, apparently, was that he parked on Francisco, and walked down the alley. He opened the gate, and came into this passageway here. So I figure he could’ve gone up the back stairs and tried to get in through the back door.” Again Towne pointed, this time to the semi-enclosed stairs that led to the two rear apartments: mine and another tenant’s.

  In the dim light, I examined the padlock. Immediately, Towne moved to my side and snapped on his flashlight. Darrell stepped to my other side. The padlock was closed. There were no jimmy marks.

  “If he came through this gate, he had a key.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Is that what happened, do you think?”

  “Well, so far there’s only one witness. She’s a teen-age girl, on the other side of the alley. She was taking out the garbage.” Towne gestured with the flashlight, playing the beam across the rear of the neighboring building. “She saw him just as he was entering the courtyard—here.”

  “Why did she think he was a prowler? He could’ve been one of the tenants.”

  “He was acting suspiciously, she said. Like he didn’t belong here. So she called us.”

  “How long did it take you to respond?”

  “About three minutes, sir.”

  “Did she see the prowler again?”

  “No. She figures that he left while she was phoning—assuming that he didn’t effect entry into the building.”

  “If he left the way he came,” I said thoughtfully, “he didn’t stay long.”

  “I know.”

  I was staring down at the huge padlock. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d be able to get past that lock, but not be able to effect entry.”

  “The other apartment’s back door is locked and barred, sir,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is … ah … yours?”

  “I hope so,” I answered drily. I took his flashlight and moved to the storage room, playing the beam around me as I walked. I took out my keys, opened the door and switched on the overhead light. The room was partitioned by slatted two-by-fours, divided into four huge floor-to-ceiling cubicles. Each cubicle was secured by two padlocks, each one locked. In my locker, at least, nothing was disturbed.

  “Wait here.” Quickly, I ascended the rear stairs and tried my back door with a key. The door was bolted from the inside. I saw no jimmy marks, nothing suspicious. I returned to the courtyard and handed Towne his flashlight.

  “I think it was a false alarm,” I said. “The landlord could’ve sent someone over to check on a possible gas leak. That happened not too long ago. But if I find anything disturbed upstairs, I’ll call Central Station. Have you got a description of the subject?”

  Towne shrugged. “The usual. Medium height, medium weight male. Age undetermined. He was dressed in a jacket and a stocking cap, the witness said. And she thought he had a slight limp.”

  “No other witnesses?”

  “No, sir. Not so far. But we might get something from the regular sector car. This isn’t our sector. We just responded to the call.”

  “Okay, Towne, that’s all. Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” He hesitated, then said, “I guess you don’t remember me, but I helped you out a couple of months ago on that murder-extortion case, when you had a suspect cornered in that construction site near the Tenderloin. I … ah … was one of the ones that chased him. I was on the Tenderloin Detail—on foot. It was dark, and you probably didn’t see my face. So I … ah … thought I should tell you. In case you didn’t recognize me, I mean.”

  I smiled. “Were you the one that passed me like a shot when I was chasing him?”

  “Well … I ran track for Balboa, Lieutenant. I was an all-city miler.”

  “I believe you, Towne. Nice to see you again.”

  “The … ah … the reason I mentioned it”—he shifted his gangle-limbed body clumsily—“I … thought that, if you ever needed someone to try out in Homicide, I … well … I got a captain’s citation for chasing that suspect.” Now his Adam’s apple was bobbing convulsively, out of control. But he still stared me earnestly in the eye as he spoke.

  “I’ll keep it in mind, Towne. And thanks again.” I gestured for him to precede us through the passageway, and waved him away.

  Unlocking the door to my apartment, I stepped inside. Nothing was disturbed. All the windows were locked, and my “security drawer” behind the kitchen cabinet was untouched. Watching me conclude the search, Darrell was plainly let down.

  “Nothing, huh?”

  “Nothing.” I gestured toward the refrigerator. “Do you want some milk and cookies?” Last summer, he’d gone through a half-gallon of milk each day of his visit, plus a pound of oatmeal cookies.

  “No thanks.” He yawned, glancing at the kitchen clock. The time was nine-thirty. “I’m sleepy. Maybe I’ve got jet lag or something.”

  I smiled regretfully and went with him to the spare bedroom. I showed him two empty drawers in the bureau, and switched on the light in the closet. Then I got a set of visitors’ towels from the linen closet, and hung them in the bathroom. From the hallway, I said good night.

  Three

  AS I GLANCED BALEFULLY at the clock, I scooped up the contents of my “in” basket and squared off the inch-thick stack of papers on the desk before me. The time was almost noon. All morning, I’d been fighting my “in” basket. In exactly two days—by Friday noon—I hoped to leave town with Darrell. But last night there’d been two homicides in San Francisco. In the Tenderloin, a dead hooker had been found propped up behind the steering wheel of a gold-and-black Cadillac. In Hunter’s Point, a middle-aged woman had clubbed her husband with a cast-iron skillet while he dozed in front of the TV. With the exception of Friedman, who was coordinating the investigations, and Canelli, who’d volunteered to drive Darrell downtown to shop for fishing lures, everyone in the Detail was out in the field. So every few moments my phone had been ringing—and the papers kept collecting.

  I was staring at a voucher requesting authorization from Homicide for a hundred twenty-six hours of extra stakeout time. Gritting my teeth, I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Allocations,” a voice answered. “Patrolman Norris.”

  “This is Lieutenant Hastings. Let me talk to Lieutenant Reilly.”

  “Yessir.”

  A moment later Reilly came on the line. “Now, listen, Frank,” he began. “I know what you’re going to say. But before you—”

  “Sid, if you think that I’m going to let you stick me with all the stakeout time on that Carter thing, you’re just plain crazy. That was a Narcotics case, and you know it. They were three days into the stakeout before the body turned up. And furthermore they—”

  “Two days,” he interrupted wearily. “But that’s not the point. The point is that—”

  “The point is that I’m getting screwed. I—Christ—I’m just not going to sit still for this, Sid. I might as well tell you right now. I’m not going to—”

  “That body was three days old, Frank. Maybe four. Ask the coroner if you don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t care whether it was three months old. I’m not going to get charged with that time just because Narco is way over b
udget.”

  “All right. I’ll see what the captain says about a fifty-fifty split. Jesus.”

  “That’s a little better.”

  “I thought you were on vacation.”

  “Is that why Narco tried to stick Homicide? Because they thought I’d be gone?”

  He chuckled. “God, no. That’d leave them with Friedman. Have you ever tried to stick Friedman with even a lunch check, let alone a—”

  My other line buzzed.

  “I’ve got to go, Sid. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Especially to Narco. And have a good vacation.”

  “Thanks again.” I pushed the phone’s blinking Lucite button. “Hastings.”

  “This is Canelli, Lieutenant. I thought I should tell you that me and your kid—your son—we’re here. At the Hall, I mean. We just got back.”

  “Did Darrell get what he wanted?” I scrawled 50-50 Split with Narco across the voucher and dropped it into my “out” basket.

  “I guess so. I waited in the car. Do you want me to give him a tour? I mean, is it all right with you?”

  “It’s all right with me, Canelli.”

  “I thought I’d show him Communications, and then maybe take him down to the lab.”

  “Fine. Come back here about one o’clock, and the three of us can have lunch. On me.”

  “Oh. Well … fine, Lieutenant.” He coughed uncomfortably. “I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it, Canelli.” Smiling, I hung up the phone and turned again to the stack of reports and vouchers. The invitation for lunch, I knew, would literally cause Canelli to sweat—before, during and after the meal. Whenever he was in the presence of a superior officer, Canelli sweated. At age twenty-eight, he was the newest, youngest member of the Homicide Detail. I’d chosen him because he neither looked nor acted nor thought like a cop. At only five foot eight, he was a swarthy, suety two hundred pounds. His eyes were a soft, guileless brown; his expression was perpetually puzzled. Canelli was the only cop I’d ever known who could get his feelings hurt.

  I was initialing an interrogation report when a knock sounded on my door: two sharp, authoritative raps. I knew that tattoo. Pete Friedman, my senior co-lieutenant, had come down the hallway to confer with me. His timing, as usual, was bad.

  “Come in.” Pointedly, I began leafing through another interrogation report, this one more than ten pages long. Friedman closed the door, crossed to my visitor’s chair and sank down with his customary grateful sigh. It was a ritual sigh, signifying Friedman’s longstanding contention that my visitor’s chair was the only one in the Department that could suitably accommodate his imposing bulk, rumored to exceed two hundred fifty pounds.

  “How’re you doing?” As he asked the question, Friedman began another of his rituals, unwrapping a cigar, then rummaging through his pockets for matches. Inevitably, the process involved considerable shifting from one ham to the other, accompanied by constant grunting. Then with the cigar lit, he invariably sailed his still-smoking match into my wastebasket, ignoring the ashtray that I always pushed toward him.

  “I’m snowed under,” I answered. I initialed the outsize report, promising myself to get it out of the files when I got back from vacation, and read it. “I’m running out of time.”

  “How’s Darrell’s visit going?”

  “So far, so good.” I okayed an expense voucher, this one authorizing repair of a cruiser’s right front fender, dented in hot pursuit. The cruiser was mine.

  “If you want to,” Friedman said, “the two of you can come over for dinner tonight. I have a couple of Chaplin movies, and my number-two son has agreed to favor us with his presence.”

  I looked up. “Thanks, Pete. But I just talked to Ann. She’s invited us tonight.”

  Friedman nodded judicious approval. “That’s a better move. If my projections are correct—if you and Ann get married, that is—then you’ve got to get Darrell and Ann together. But don’t tell Darrell you’re in love with the lady until he falls into your trap and admits that he likes her, too.” He drew on his cigar, then said, “How about tomorrow night? Thursday. I can’t guarantee my kid’s presence. But the food will be just as good.”

  I shook my head. “We’ll be packing Thursday. We’re going to leave Friday afternoon.” I glanced at the stack of papers. “With luck.”

  “There, ah—” He cleared his throat. “There could be a problem.”

  Something in his voice made me look up again. “A problem?”

  Whose problem? Mine?

  “Yeah,” he answered. He spoke with his usual easy dispassion. But behind the monosyllable I could hear a tightness—an unaccustomed tension. Friedman was worried.

  He drew a long, reluctant breath. Then, examining the tip of his cigar, he began to speak. “A few minutes ago the Chief called me in. He deputized me to tell you something. The fink.”

  “For Christ’s sake, tell me what?”

  “It seems,” he said, “that Chief Dwyer got an anonymous phone call about an hour ago, in which the caller said that he could prove you’d taken a bribe.” As he spoke, his deceptively lazy-lidded eyes remained on his cigar. His broad, bland face revealed nothing—as usual. Friedman had always reminded me of a complacent bullfrog. Now, slowly, he raised his gaze to meet mine. “Needless to say, no one thinks you’re guilty. The point is, though, that bribery charges have to go through channels. Automatically. And it takes time. I told Dwyer that you had to get away Friday on vacation. He was sympathetic. Or at least he was as sympathetic as he ever gets. But—” Friedman moved the cigar in a small, eloquently helpless arc.

  It had never happened to me before. I’d been kicked, gouged, punched and shot at—many times. But I’d never been accused of taking a bribe.

  I capped my ball-point pen and placed it on the squared-off stack of papers before me. As I pushed my chair back from the desk, I glanced at the clock. The time was twenty minutes after twelve. In forty minutes, Darrell and Canelli would be knocking on my door, ready for lunch.

  “What’re the details?” I asked quietly.

  “They’re about what you’d expect. A voice—a man’s voice—got through to the Chief’s secretary, and gave her the story first. She decided to pass the guy on to Dwyer. But, first, she forewarned Dwyer, and he recorded the call. The voice said—” Friedman fished a crumpled slip of paper from a lower vest pocket. The movement dislodged his cigar’s inch-long ash, which bounced off an already-smudged lapel and fell to the floor in front of my desk. Automatically, I went through the fruitless ritual of pushing the ashtray toward him—at the same time sighing loudly.

  “The voice said,” Friedman continued, “ ‘I gave Lieutenant Hastings a thousand-dollar payoff for a favor he did me. The money is in a brown paper sack, in the basement of his apartment house. It’s in used twenties, tens and fives, according to his instructions.’ ”

  Last night’s prowler—

  Certainly, it was last night’s prowler.

  In a few sentences, I described the incident. Before I’d finished, Friedman was already on the phone to Communications, requesting that Towne, from Central, and both the officers assigned to my sector be ordered to report to either one of us, in person or by radio. Then Friedman cradled the phone and heaved himself to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “To your apartment building, dummy.”

  Four

  “SLOW DOWN, FOR GOD’S sake.” Friedman braced himself against the dashboard. “What’s the hurry?”

  “I’m having lunch with Canelli and Darrell at one o’clock.”

  “Well, call in and leave word that you’ll be late.”

  “I’ve already left a note.”

  “Then slow down. What you’re doing is just taking out your frustrations on a dumb machine.”

  “You’ve got a theory for everything, you know that?”

  “Now you’re taking your frustrations out on me.”

  Perversely,
I cut the next corner at a reckless angle—then slowed down.

  “Better.” He settled himself more comfortably. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “The probabilities are,” he said, “that there’s no thousand dollars in your basement. Fifty, yes. Even a hundred. But a thousand”—he shook his head—“that’s a lot of money, just to set somebody up. People who’re smart enough to acquire a spare thousand dollars aren’t dumb enough to waste it out of spite.”

  I muttered an obscenity as a truck moved up on my left to box me in behind a bus. Then, speaking slowly, I said, “I’ve been thinking about that—about the thousand dollars, and what kind of a person would lay out that much money.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s only one person I can think of, with a big enough grudge against me. And what’s more, he’s got a limp.”

  “A limp?”

  “Towne, last night, said that a witness thought the subject might’ve been limping.”

  “Who’ve you got in mind?”

  “Charles Keller.”

  “It rings a vague bell.”

  “Do you remember Jason Keller—that eighteen-year-old homosexual creep who murdered another homosexual in a sadomasochistic love ritual? It happened about two years ago, on Howard Street.”

  “Who could forget that one,” Friedman answered drily. “It had everything—all the adjectives. And most of the adverbs, too, come to think about it.”

  “Well, Jason Keller got sent to San Quentin. He only lasted a year before he got fatally knifed in a love triangle thing.” I turned left into Lombard Street. My apartment was less than a half-mile away.

  “And it ruined the father’s life,” Friedman said. “I seem to remember now. The kid went to ‘Q’ and the father started drinking. So the mother threw the father out of the house. Whereupon the father lost his job. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And, naturally, Keller blamed all his misfortunes on you. The usual procedure.”