III
Late that afternoon I took a recess from bloodhounding and went up to the office for a powwow with the Old Man. He was leaning back in his chair, staring out the window, tapping on his desk with the customary long yellow pencil.
A tall, plump man in his seventies, this boss of mine, with a white-mustached, baby-pink grandfatherly face, mild blue eyes behind rimless spectacles, and no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope. Fifty years of crook-hunting for the Continental had emptied him of everything except brains and a soft-spoken, gently smiling shell of politeness that was the same whether things went good or bad—and meant as little at one time as another. We who worked under him were proud of his cold-bloodedness. We used to boast that he could spit icicles in July, and we called him Pontius Pilate among ourselves, because he smiled politely when he sent us out to be crucified on suicidal jobs.
He turned from the window as I came in, nodded me to a chair, and smoothed his mustache with the pencil. On his desk the afternoon papers screamed the news of the Seaman’s National Bank and Golden Gate Trust Company double-looting in five colors.
“What is the situation?” he asked, as one would ask about the weather.
“The situation is a pip,” I told him. “There were a hundred and fifty crooks in the push if there was one. I saw a hundred myself—or think I did—and there were slews of them that I didn’t see—planted where they could jump out and bite when fresh teeth were needed. They bit, too. They bushwacked the police and made a merry wreck out of ’em—going and coming. They hit the two banks at ten sharp—took over the whole block—chased away the reasonable people—dropped the others. The actual looting was duck soup to a mob of that size. Twenty or thirty of ’em to each of the banks while the others held the street. Nothing to it but wrap up the spoils and take ’em home.
“There’s a highly indignant business men’s meeting down there now—wild-eyed stockbrokers up on their hind legs yelling for the chief of police’s heart’s blood. The police didn’t do any miracles, that’s a cinch, but no police department is equipped to handle a trick of that size—no matter how well they think they are. The whole thing lasted less than twenty minutes. There were, say, a hundred and fifty thugs in on it, loaded for bear, every play mapped to the inch. How are you going to get enough coppers down there, size up the racket, plan your battle, and put it over in that little time? It’s easy enough to say the police should look ahead—should have a dose for every emergency—but these same birds who are yelling, ‘Rotten,’ down there now would be the first to squawk, ‘Robbery,’ if their taxes were boosted a couple of cents to buy more policemen and equipment.
“But the police fell down—there’s no question about that—and there will be a lot of beefy necks feel the ax. The armored cars were no good, the grenading was about fifty-fifty, since the bandits knew how to play that game, too. But the real disgrace of the party was the police machine-guns. The bankers and brokers are saying they were fixed. Whether they were deliberately tampered with, or were only carelessly taken care of, is anybody’s guess, but only one of the damned things would shoot, and it not very well.
“The getaway was north on Montgomery to Columbus. Along Columbus the parade melted, a few cars at a time, into side streets. The police ran into an ambush between Washington and Jackson, and by the time they had shot their way through it the bandit cars had scattered all over the city. A lot of ’em have been picked up since then—empty.
“All the returns aren’t in yet, but right now the score stands something like this: The haul will run God only knows how far into the millions—easily the richest pickings ever got with civilian guns. Sixteen coppers were knocked off, and three times that many wounded. Twelve innocent spectators, bank clerks, and the like, were killed and about as many banged around. There are two dead and five shot-ups who might be either thugs or spectators that got too close. The bandits lost seven dead that we know of, and thirty-one prisoners, most of them bleeding somewhere.
“One of the dead was Fat Boy Clarke. Remember him? He shot his way out of a Des Moines courtroom three or four years ago. Well, in his pocket we found a piece of paper, a map of Montgomery Street between Pine and Bush, the block of the looting. On the back of the map were typed instructions, telling him exactly what to do and when to do it. An X on the map showed him where he was to park the car in which he arrived with his seven men, and there was a circle where he was to stand with them, keeping an eye on things in general and on the windows and roofs of the buildings across the street in particular. Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 on the map marked doorways, steps, a deep window, and so on, that were to be used for shelter if shots had to be traded with those windows and roofs. Clarke was to pay no attention to the Bush Street end of the block, but if the police charged the Pine Street end he was to move his men up there, distributing them among points marked a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and h. (His body was found on the spot marked a.) Every five minutes during the looting he was to send a man to an automobile standing in the street at a point marked on the map with a star, to see if there were any new instructions. He was to tell his men that if he were shot down one of them must report to the car, and a new leader would be given them. When the signal for the getaway was given, he was to send one of his men to the car in which he had come. If it was still in commission, this man was to drive it, not passing the car ahead of him. If it was out of whack, the man was to report to the star-marked car for instructions how to get a new one. I suppose they counted on finding enough parked cars to take care of this end. While Clarke waited for his car he and his men were to throw as much lead as possible at every target in their district, and none of them was to board the car until it came abreast of them. Then they were to drive out Montgomery to Columbus to—blank.
“Get that?” I asked. “Here are a hundred and fifty gunmen, split into groups under group-leaders, with maps and schedules showing what each man is to do, showing the fireplug he’s to kneel behind, the brick he’s to stand on, where he’s to spit—everything but the name and address of the policeman he’s to shoot! It’s just as well Beno couldn’t give me the details—I’d have written it off as a hophead’s dream!”
“Very interesting,” the Old Man said, smiling blandly.
“The Fat Boy’s was the only timetable we found,” I went on with my history. “I saw a few friends among the killed and caught, and the police are still identifying others. Some are local talent, but most of ’em seem to be imported stock. Detroit, Chi, New York, St. Louis, Denver, Portland, L.A., Philly, Baltimore—all seem to have sent delegates. As soon as the police get through identifying them I’ll make out a list.
“Of those who weren’t caught, Bluepoint Vance seems to be the main squeeze. He was in the car that directed operations. I don’t know who else was there with him. The Shivering Kid was in on the festivities, and I think Alphabet Shorty McCoy, though I didn’t get a good look at him. Sergeant Bender told me he spotted Toots Salda and Darby M’Laughlin in the push, and Morgan saw the Did-and-Dat Kid. That’s a good cross-section of the layout—gunmen, swindlers, hijackers from all over Rand-McNally.
“The Hall of Justice has been a slaughterhouse all afternoon. The police haven’t killed any of their guests—none that I know of—but they’re sure-God making believers out of them. Newspaper writers who like to sob over what they call the third degree should be down there now. After being knocked around a bit, some of the guests have talked. But the hell of it is they don’t know a whole lot. They know some names—Denny Burke, Toby the Lugs, Old Pete Best, Fat Boy Clarke and Paddy the Mex were named—and that helps some, but all the smacking power in the police force arm can’t bring out anything else.
“The racket seems to have been organized like this: Denny Burke, for instance, is known as a shifty worker in Baltimore. Well, Denny talks to eight or ten likely boys, one at a time. ‘How’d you like to pick up a piece of change out on the Coast?’ he asks them. ‘Doing what?’ the candidate wants to know. ‘Doing what you’re told,’ the King of Frog Island says. ‘You know me. I’m telling you this is the fattest picking ever rigged, a kick in the pants to go through—airtight. Everybody in on it will come home lousy with cush—and they’ll all come home if they don’t dog it. That’s all I’m spilling. If you don’t like it—forget it.’
“And these birds did know Denny, and if he said the job was good that was enough for them. So they put in with him. He told them nothing. He saw that they had guns, gave ’em each a ticket to San Francisco and twenty bucks, and told them where to meet him here. Last night he collected them and told them they went to work this morning. By that time they had moved around the town enough to see that it was bubbling over with visiting talent, including such moguls as Toots Salda, Bluepoint Vance and the Shivering Kid. So this morning they went forth eagerly with the King of Frog Island at their head to do their stuff.
“The other talkers tell varieties of the same tale. The police found room in their crowded jail to stick in a few stool-pigeons. Since few of the bandits knew very many of the others, the stools had an easy time of it, but the only thing they could add to what we’ve got is that the prisoners are looking for a wholesale delivery tonight. They seem to think their mob will crash the prison and turn ’em loose. That’s probably a lot of chewing-gum, but anyway this time the police will be ready.
“That’s the situation as it stands now. The police are sweeping the streets, picking up everybody who needs a shave or can’t show a certificate of attendance signed by his parson, with special attention to outward bound trains, boats and automobiles. I sent Jack Counihan and Dick Foley down North Beach way to play the joints and see if they can pick up anything.”
“Do you think Bluepoint Vance was the actual directing intelligence in this robbery?” the Old Man asked.
“I hope so—we know him.”
The Old Man turned his chair so his mild eyes could stare out the window again, and he tapped his desk reflectively with the pencil.
“I’m afraid not,” he said in a gently apologetic tone. “Vance is a shrewd, resourceful and determined criminal, but his weakness is one common to his type. His abilities are all for present action and not for planning ahead. He has executed some large operations, but I’ve always thought I saw in them some other mind at work behind him.”
I couldn’t quarrel with that. If the Old Man said something was so, then it probably was, because he was one of these cautious babies who’ll look out of the window at a cloudburst and say, “It seems to be raining,” on the off-chance that somebody’s pouring water off the roof.
“And who is this arch-gonif?” I asked.
“You’ll probably know that before I do,” he said, smiling benignantly.