One man, Ferguson, looked up. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry, he says,” Dondero muttered, and straightened his coat. “Twenty cents down the drain!”
“Your stomach will thank you,” Reardon said coldly, and walked rapidly down the long corridor to the elevator bank with Dondero hurrying to catch up. The two waited impatiently for the automatic elevator to arrive; Dondero opened his mouth to question the reason for their hasty departure, and then closed it, choosing instead to light a cigarette and flip the spent match in the general direction of the sandbox between the elevator doors. There was a hard look on the lieutenant’s face that told him questions were best postponed until they were in Reardon’s car and the lieutenant could take out whatever was bugging him on the gas pedal, the traffic lights, the traffic itself, or any pedestrian silly enough to challenge the lieutenant to the right-of-way. One thing, Dondero calculated, this hasn’t anything to do with Jan, or I’d still be drinking my coffee...
The elevator arrived at long last; it dropped them to street level at its usual frustrating, inching speed, somewhat like a coffin being lowered in quicksand by a group of overcautious gravediggers. The two men waited while the door eased open as slowly as its designers could contrive, and then they were walking quickly across the mottled marble floor under the curious eyes of the uniformed men behind the long angled information counter, their footsteps echoing hollowly and rapidly in the deserted lobby. They ducked under the night rope, pushed against the one door left open at night, and trotted down the broad steps of the building, crowding into Reardon’s souped-up Charger parked illegally at the curb. Reardon had the engine racing before Dondero could get properly seated. The sergeant’s head snapped back as Reardon clashed gears, glancing over his shoulder at the oncoming traffic, and then he cut into the street with a roar of the engine, quite as if the path behind him had been clear. The agonized wail of a horn screamed from behind him as he shot down Bryant; behind him a swearing driver was trying to control both his car and his temper and succeeding with neither. Reardon paid him no attention.
Dondero turned, reaching for the retractable half of the seat belt hidden at his side. Driving with Jim Reardon was always nerve-wracking, but never quite so much as when the lieutenant was in a particular hurry. Nor, Dondero thought, did the yellow fog, the damp pavement and the eerie reflection of streetlamps on the glistening roadway help at all.
“A guy could get whiplash driving with you,” he complained, fumbling for the strap. “What’s the large rush?” He spoke around the stub of his cigarette, both hands occupied.
“A killing,” Reardon said tightly.
“I figured it wasn’t some kids got caught swiping candy,” Dondero said drily, and finally managed to fasten the seat belt. He drew it up tightly, crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and looked over at Reardon. “Who, why, what and where?” An essential omission occurred to him. “Plus when, of course.”
“A stabbing in a tavern down on the Embarcadero,” Reardon said flatly. He sped past a cab double-parked, discharging passengers, barely missing an occupant emerging from the street side of the cab. There was a faint curse, fading behind them in the night. “A few minutes ago.”
“So there’s no reason getting our own selves killed getting down there,” Dondero said in a reasonable tone of voice. “If the guy’s dead, he’ll wait for us.”
“This one won’t”
Dondero’s eyebrows raised. “He walks on water?” A sudden possible explanation for hurrying to a mere tavern knifing came to him. “Who caught it? A cop? Somebody we know?”
A traffic light suddenly turned crimson before them. Reardon stepped on the brake abruptly, muttering nasty sounds under his breath, skidding to a precarious stop, engine panting to be off. The automobile he had cut off in front of the Hall of Justice came to a halt beside him, its driver prepared for argument. One look at the tough, rigid face of the driver of the Charger, plus the benign but hard face of the man beside him, and he subsided, grumbling to himself. Reardon paid no heed to the car at his side, gauging instead the chances of making it through the line of cars crossing the intersection before him. He correctly judged it would be suicidal, to the profound relief of Sergeant Dondero, who was reading his mind; the lieutenant settled back to wait, his eyes glued on the traffic light, his fingers tapping the steering wheel restlessly.
“I asked you a question,” Dondero said impatiently. “Was it a cop? A little politeness, sometimes, goes a long way, you know.”
Reardon risked taking his eye from the traffic light long enough to glance over at his companion, and then as quickly returned to his vigil. “Jerry Capp,” he said quietly.
“What!” It wasn’t a question as much as a negation. Dondero sat as erect as the seat belt permitted. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what they tell me down at the office.”
Dondero frowned in patent disbelief. “What would a big-time hood like Jerry Capp be doing down in some crummy bar down on the Embarcadero, for crissakes? That ain’t his sort of beat.”
“He was probably having himself a drink,” Reardon said drily. He leaned forward, glaring up at the light, willing it to change. “What do you go to taverns for?”
“Yeah, but that’s me,” Dondero said. “I ain’t Jerry Capp. The day I collect the kind of dough that guy has, I don’t go to crummy joints for a brew, believe me! That day comes, I drink only pink champagne — imported — and I only do that at the Top of the Fairmont, or—”
He broke off abruptly to reach frantically for the support of the dashboard as the lieutenant’s foot traded the brake for the gas pedal in answer to the changing of the light. Reardon tramped down viciously; the special engine responded instantly. They shot across the intersection, swaying desperately around a bus that had elected to turn into the street at the last moment. Dondero hung on tightly and swallowed convulsively, looking across the car.
“Hey, for crissakes, Jim! Take it easy!” He shook his head. “And to think I turned down a job with the fire department because I figured a guy could get killed riding a hook and ladder!” He attempted to use logic on the mad driver. “Anyway, so what if it is Jerry Capp? That cheap bum! I mean, that bum — because cheap he wasn’t; that you got to give him. He took from the poor and gave to the rich — himself. Anyway, what I mean, we ought to be out celebrating, not trying to get ourselves killed.”
“We’re hurrying because the captain said for us to hurry.” Reardon’s tone made no attempt to disguise the sarcasm. To prove his own loyalty to the captain’s orders he tried to squeeze a few more miles per hour out of the Charger. “We can celebrate later.” He shrugged; his strong hands on the wheel rested there lightly, controlling the speeding car perfectly. “Maybe the captain wants us to catch the killer in a hurry so he can pin a medal on him.”
Dondero hadn’t heard a word said; he was too busy hanging on.
“Anyway,” he went on stubbornly, “who ever claimed it was Jerry Capp in the first place? I still don’t see him hanging around any cheap gin mill. And will you please for crissakes watch how you’re driving?”
Reardon cut around a slow-moving truck, narrowly missing a brace of taxis whose drivers were riding side by side, screaming at each other through open windows, one man leaning across the seat, steering with one hand. Dondero wiped his brow. They approached First Street; ahead in the mist muffled lights glowed in the sky, outlining the skeleton form of the Bay Bridge, fading mysteriously into the fog, as if the bridge were incomplete, its girders ending in space, leading unwary travelers into limbo.