Flood Warning Read online

  Flood Warning

  Will Rayner

  © Will Rayner 2016

  Will Rayner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2016.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 1

  The cool air of a soft May morning crept through the partially opened window and caressed the tender spot on T.J. Flood’s skull. Flood appreciated the gesture, but it really wasn’t doing much for his headache. Wearily, he tried to concentrate on the two men in his office. They were so big they almost blotted out one wall, and just looking at them made his head throb even more. T.J. had the fuzzy impression the oxygen in the confined space was slowly being displaced by their presence, despite the languid breeze trickling in from Bush Street.

  Maybe six-foot-four and two hundred and forty pounds each, T.J. guessed. That puts them fifty pounds and four inches out of my league. Never saw cops so big. They were dressed in identical black worsted, blue shirts and drab ties. The twin ensembles had the effect of mobile shrouds rather than business attire. T.J. hoped they wouldn’t decide to sit down in his two chairs, which were built for clients, not hulks.

  At that moment, Lieutenant James T. Bracken of homicide opened the door from the reception area and T.J. convinced himself that a whoosh of compressed air escaped through the gap. Bracken plopped down in one of the chairs Flood was so worried about, but he was five-eight and a hundred and fifty pounds, so its thin upholstery barely acknowledged his presence.

  “So, Thomas Jefferson Flood then, is it?” Bracken said in his reedy voice. “How’s that coconut of yours?”

  “Sore.”

  “Brains not scrambled any more than usual? Eyesight okay? Still able to detect miscreants? No loose teeth?”

  Flood favored the lieutenant with a sour smile. “Spare me the flatfoot humor, Jimbo,” he growled, then he let his gaze wander from Bracken to the twin towers, both of whom were regarding him impassively.

  “Ah, I do believe you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Pat and Mike,” Bracken said, and when Flood groaned his disbelief, added: “That’s them, all right. Two fine Polish lads, used to be harness bulls down on the docks. Now they’re in vice.”

  “Vice?” T.J. echoed. “Shouldn’t they be assigned to guarding the mayor? He could use some protection, from what I hear.”

  “Vice. Very useful, these two laddies, for breaking down doors and walls in blind pigs, opium houses, betting parlors and various other dens of iniquity. They asked if they could tag along this morning. Benny the Bundle is — was — of great interest to vice.”

  At that moment, Benny the Bundle was lying dead just a few feet away, a trickle of blood discoloring the hardwood floor of Flood and Flood’s outer office.

  “Flood — what kinda moniker is that?” Pat, or maybe it was Mike, asked.

  “It’s an all-American name,” T.J. replied. “Unfortunately, we don’t come from the wealthy Comstock Lode branch of the family, so Flood and Flood have to substitute hard work and intelligence for inherited moolah.”

  “You forgot to add crafty and cunning,” Bracken said. “So tell us again exactly what happened and don’t hold back on any of the juicy bits.”

  Flood sighed. “I was in here about four a.m., writing a report. You know how my old man likes things neatly tied up...”

  “At four o’clock on a Sunday morning?” Mike — or maybe it was Pat — interrupted in disbelief.

  “A private detective never sleeps,” T.J. said drily. “At least not at this outfit.” He returned his bloodshot gaze to Bracken. “I was just finishing up when I heard someone charging through the front door. Made a hell of a racket. Then little Benny”, Flood raised his square chin toward the corpse in the outer office, “started shouting, ‘Stay away from me, you sonofabitch! You ain’t gonna make me dead...’”

  “He got the dead part right,” Bracken observed.

  “I’m reaching into my desk drawer for the Detective Special when I hear two loud pops. Not bangs, pops. The lights in the outer office go out. I sort of ease open the door and there’s Benny face down on the floor. He’s sort of framed in the light from my office. Nobody else around, but the door to the hallway was open. I shove my gun into my pocket and bend over to see whether Benny is still with us...”

  “Which he ain’t,” one of the hulks said.

  “Which he ain’t, but I don’t know this because just then I get sapped. Woke up a couple of hours later in this chair with a lump on my head and a hell of a headache. They must have dragged me in here. That’s when I called the Hall of Justice.”

  “Benny the Bundle didn’t, uh, try to give you anything, by any chance?” Mike — or maybe Pat — asked. Benny the Bundle was called that because he was a long-time numbers runner in the San Francisco underworld who had a habit of travelling from one pickup point to another, carrying a distinctive carpet bag.

  T.J. started to shake his head, then decided it hurt too much, so he answered economically “Nope.”

  “Don’t tell me Benny was a client of Flood and Flood,” Bracken said. He made it sound like a statement of fact. “But then nineteen-ought-thirty-four ain’t been the best of years so far. Tell me I’m wrong. Maybe Sam didn’t need Benny’s kind of money, after all.”

  The sourness had returned to Flood’s face. “C’mon, lieutenant, you know I don’t have to divulge clients to you without their permission.” He gathered his thoughts for a moment. “We have a client and the client wanted us to find out something and I was tagging Benny and Benny took me where I wanted to go so now Flood and Flood have no more interest in Benny the Bundle.”

  “Did you get that, Mike?” Bracken asked the nearest man-mountain. “That clear as a bell to your innocent ears?”

  “So Benny finds out you’ve been tailing him and comes up here to complain,” Mike said. “And someone clips him. Or maybe you clip him?”

  “Naw, not Thomas Jefferson the Flood, here,” Bracken broke in before T.J. could respond. “From the looks of the holes in the back of Benny’s skull, he was popped with a silenced .22. That’s not T.J.’s style. Not on his own turf, not on that shiny hardwood floor out there. But let’s have a look at that Detective Special of yours, just in case.”

  Flood wordlessly produced the snub-nosed revolver and handed it over. Bracken sniffed the barrel and solemnly inspected the six .38 rounds in the cylinder. “Naw, these would have blown half Benny’s head off,” he said, returning the gun.

  “Can you tell us the places you followed Benny to, when you was following him?” asked the other hulk. This had to be Pat, Flood thought, then sardonically congratulated himself on making such an elemental deduction, despite the fact that the inside of his head resembled a bowl of mush.

  “Not without talking to my old man and the client,” he said.

  “The thing
is, T.J., the thing is, Pat and Mike here believe Benny was carrying more than the chicken feed from the numbers racket during his, shall we say, final days on this planet,” Bracken said. “But they don’t know when and they don’t know where. And the fact he met his maker on these very premises suggests to us that an upstanding citizen such as yourself — or your father — might wish to assist us in our inquiries, as they say in the old country.”

  Flood shook an Old Gold out of its pouch and lit it. “So what have we got?” he asked rhetorically. “A dead Benny and a missing stash of cash, or whatever, that the two Leaning Towers of Pisa here want to get their mitts on.” Pat scowled at Flood’s flippant reference to his size, but Mike let the ghost of a smile escape. T.J. decided Mike was the more intelligent of the pair.

  “I can tell you right now I didn’t see Benny hauling anything around except that skinny satchel of his, but I’ll talk to pop and we’ll get back to you.”

  A clatter from the outer room signified the arrival of the meat wagon boys and the medical examiner. Bracken motioned the examiner — a portly Dr. Globall — into T.J.’s office. “That one’s dead and this one ain’t, doc,” the lieutenant said, “so he’s first in line. Better take a gander at the cast-iron noggin of young Thomas here.”

  Dr. Globall peered suspiciously at the swelling. “Skin only moderately lacerated,” he said. “Get over to Harbor Emergency and get it cleaned and bandaged. Some ice will reduce the swelling.” He opened his bag and shook two pills out of a bottle. “Here, these will ease your headache.” Then he went out to officially certify that Benny was as dead as a doorpost.

  After everyone — dead and alive — had left, Thomas Jefferson Flood lit another cigarette. “Nuts,” he informed the empty office. The doctor hadn’t advised him not to take the pills with booze, so T.J. rescued the office bottle from the bottom drawer. “To hell with Benny the Bundle and all who sail with him,” he said. Then he swallowed the pills and took a jolt of rye.

  *

  Samuel Adams Flood bent over and peered intently through his spectacles at the critical area on the office floor. The elder Flood was spare to the point of gauntness. His nose, now more prominent in a face beginning to hollow out with age, was sharper and longer than his son’s. Folding over from the waist with feet primly together, Sam Flood resembled a lean shorebird waiting for some prey to swim by.

  Finally, Flood straightened up. To the casual observer, the bloodstain was gone and the polish restored. The cleaning woman had done a good job, he decided. Sam glanced at Agnes Wilkins, Flood and Flood’s secretary and receptionist. “How much?” he grated. With unemployment pretty bad in the city, Flood knew a buyer’s market prevailed when it came to repairs and odd jobs.

  “Thirty cents and carfare?” The shaky vibrato of Agnes’s voice turned her reply into a question rather than a statement of fact.

  “Well worth it,” her boss said. “Any calls?”

  Agnes relaxed. Her handling of the bloodstain situation had been deemed acceptable. “Just one. Mr. Silverman called. He suggested lunch on Thursday, if you were free. I said you’d call back and confirm.”

  “If T.J. comes in, I want to see him right away. How soon will you have his report typed up?”

  “In about half an hour,” Agnes called after Sam as he entered his private office and firmly closed the door.

  Chapter 2

  T.J. finally drifted in, well after the lunch hour, with his dark hair combed over the lump on his head, but with no dressing. He closed the door to Sam’s inner sanctum and sat down, his face a mask of polite expectation.

  “How’s the head?” the elder Flood asked.

  T.J. grimaced. “People keep asking me that. The head’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s not like somebody beat the crap out of me.”

  Sam didn’t pursue the point. Normally, Thomas viewed life as a game to be played, but he had his moods — especially during the past year. No harm done, however, as long as he stayed focused. At any rate, it was time to sort out this Benny mess. “You gave me the highlights on the phone Sunday morning,” he said, “but let’s clear up a couple of points. After slugging you, they dragged you into your office and propped you in your chair. Had to be at least two of them — you’re what, about 190 now?”

  T.J. nodded. “What I’m wondering, why didn’t they just roll me off Benny, if they wanted to make sure he was dead, or to search him?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Benny they wanted to search, but the office. Didn’t those two vice dicks mention he had something they wanted? Perhaps somebody else wanted it, too.”

  “But why would they haul me into my chair?, why not just leave me resting comfortably on the floor?”

  “Because they wanted to search you and your office, too. And maybe they wanted you handy, in case they had to slug you again.”

  Another angle presented itself to T.J. “That means they had a look at my report. It was laying there right on my desk.”

  “Except nobody but Agnes can read your longhand,” Sam said. “It’s all in our normal code, anyway. No names.”

  Sam reached for his pipe and filled it from a humidor on his desk. T.J. took that as a signal the ‘smoking lamp’ was lit, and dug out a cigarette. Sam got the pipe drawing nicely, then opened the file folder containing T.J.’s report. “I trust you didn’t make any promises to Jimbo Bracken,” he said.

  “Of course I didn’t. He wanted to know the details of the operation and who our client was, and I said I’d check with you and get back to him.”

  “Well, we should certainly do that,” Sam said, and held up one hand to forestall the protest the younger Flood was about to make. T.J.’s modus operandi did not allow for gratuitous exchange of information. “Let’s not close down any avenues with 750 Kearny any more than we have to,” Sam added. “Of course, we reserve the right to withhold certain items of information that we see fit.”

  They went over T.J.’s log of Benny’s itinerary during the ten days T.J. had tagged him. There were saloons, corner grocery stores, storefront ‘clubs’ — such as the Friends of Mussolini — tenements, seedy hotels, cathouses, smoke stands and deserted lunch counters. Benny also dropped by the soup kitchens and missions. The numbers game offered a quick bankroll of a few hundred bucks if you were lucky, so even the down and out found a few pennies to spare for a regular bet. Each night, Benny’s last stop was an arcade called Penny Heaven on Ellis Street. He would then head for the room he rented in a Mission Street flophouse. T.J. would wait until the light went out in Benny’s window and head home himself.

  The process was repeated Monday through Friday. Because the winning numbers in the game were the last three digits of the San Francisco Stock Exchange’s daily volume posted late each afternoon, Benny didn’t work Saturday or Sunday. Instead, on the first weekend he went to the town’s biggest bookie joint each day. T.J. got pretty bored watching Benny lose two-dollar show bets at the windows before heading back to his flop.

  “There’s a slight variation in his pattern the second week,” Sam noted.

  “You bet there is,” T.J. said. “He led me straight to the guy we were looking for, The Greek.”

  “No, no, not that. On the second Thursday, before he dropped the take-off on Ellis Street, he made an extra stop. The Ferry Building.”

  “Yeah, right. That wasn’t part of the pattern at all. I thought he was going to catch a ferry and I’d lose him, but he came right out again. Couldn’t have been in there more than a few minutes.”

  “Enough time for a pickup,” Sam guessed. “But not numbers slips.”

  “And Friday, the next day, he doesn’t go straight to Penny Heaven, he stops at this office building on California,” T.J. said.

  “He gets in the elevator?” Sam asked.

  “Yes and it stops at the fourth floor.”

  “That’s right. I hang around outside until I see Benny disappear into the elevator, then I nip in and watch it stop at the fourth.”

  “You don’t go up y
ourself?”

  “No reason to. The elevator comes down empty and I’m outside again, looking innocent.”

  “And you wait.”

  “Yeah, for about ten or fifteen minutes. I’m getting antsy, too. What’s Benny doing? I had almost decided to try the fourth floor myself when the operator suddenly takes the elevator up there. Guess who comes down in it?”

  “The Greek.”

  “The Greek, carrying a shiny briefcase. One of those new Oldsmobiles slides up and he gets in. So I forget about Benny and grab a cab. Next stop, Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  The rest of it was in T.J.’s terse report, as neatly transcribed by Agnes Wilkins. Subject observed boarding a vessel called the Amber Dawn. Telephone call to Sam, who in turn notifies their client. T.J. waits until two Packards pull up at the Wharf, then makes himself scarce.

  “So we give Bracken and his friends in vice everything except The Greek and Fisherman’s Wharf,” Sam decided.

  “Bracken will have kittens if he figures out we sicced Packy Shannon and the Turk Street Social Club on The Greek.”

  “Let him. He’s supposed to be investigating Benny’s murder, not some gang dust-up. And those boys from vice will be more interested in those two extra stops Benny made.” Shannon handled the hookers in the city and The Greek ran the gambling. The pair had coexisted peaceably enough during Prohibition, so Sam was surprised a gang rumble had apparently broken out now that liquor was legal again. He remembered that Shannon had been really anxious to find The Greek.

  “You double-checked somewhere along the line that The Greek wasn’t hiding in a closet at Penny Heaven, I assume,” Sam said. “Everybody but the cops knows he runs his bookie wire out of the second floor.”

  “Yeah, I sniffed around some. Nobody had seen The Greek since he suddenly took a powder.”

  “Okay, go meet with Bracken in a couple of days, but don’t let him lean on you. We’re giving them enough to go on and the rest is up to homicide.” Sam pulled his Hamilton railwayman’s watch out of his vest pocket. T.J. knew that meant the meeting was over. He was about to leave when Sam had one more question. “Where were you Saturday? I tried to reach you all day.”