The Laughing Gorilla (16 page)

“I’m Smeins,” he said, then ushered them into a room overlooking the street, sat down, and daintily crossed long hairless legs. “I’d be glad to answer any questions you have,” he said. He reached down and petted the calico cat curled at his feet.

“Start at the beginning, and tell us all you remember.”

“The register is correct about the time—3:00 A.M.,” he said in a calm, deliberate manner. He paused each time before speaking as if collecting his thoughts. “The woman and a man I supposed was her husband registered as: Mr. and Mrs. H. Meyers of Los Angeles. ‘We don’t have luggage,’ they told me. ‘We’ve just driven up from Southern California. We were just too tired to bring it in. Give us a quiet room. We don’t want to be disturbed.’

“When the man and the woman came in, they were not walking arm-in-arm, but seemed very chummy all the same.” Smeins rubbed his long, dry hands together. “She was very much at ease and not a bit shy. They were laughing and talking and addressing each other as ‘dear.’ He said, ‘I want a room and a bath.’ Then he turned to the girl and said, ‘Is that all right?’ She said, ‘Yes, dear.’ I handed her a folder listing San Francisco places of amusement, streetcars, playgrounds and all that sort of stuff. She smiled and said, ‘Oh, thanks. This will help me get acquainted.’ The bloke paid for the room with a $2 bill. They had no baggage with them. Then I took them up in the elevator to the third floor, to their room, #309. There were a number of vacancies but Mr. Meyers had requested that room, I was happy to oblige.

“I asked the couple, ‘Is there anything else you would like?’ She replied, ‘No, thank you.’ So I left as the man closed the door and locked it. I heard the lock click as I walked away. About 4:30 A.M., the elevator bell rang. So I went up to the third floor with the elevator, and there was the man looking cheerful. I took the bloke down to the lobby.”

Desmond was flabbergasted. The monster had accomplished all that horror in less than an hour and a half.

“You know,” said Smeins, “I think the same man may have stopped at the hotel last summer and maybe the summer before, but had never stayed any length of time. I think he was known around the hotel as a crewman on a coast ship by what name I don’t know or even what port he was from.”

“That would have been during the bloody dock strikes,” said Desmond. “Perhaps he was stranded in San Francisco along with all the idled ships.” The coast ships had particularly been hit hard. The crippling shipping strikes had wrecked the passenger steamer
Harvard
under command of Captain Louis Ellsinger (a witness in the Malcolm shooting) as surely as the Point Arguello rocks had sunk her sister ship,
Yale.

“Make a check of the hotel’s old register and see if you can find his name,” Kelleher told Smeins, knowing that it would only be another alias as surely as “Mr. Meyers” was.

“Was there anything unusual about the man?” asked Desmond.

“What wasn’t?” A huge grin crossed the skeletal face. He rocked one slippered foot.

“Now think carefully, what did he look like?”

“Von Feldman might have seen him more clearly because he went up to fix the window, but let’s see.” He put one hand under his sloping chin and thought. “Mr. Meyers was fairly well-dressed in a dark suit that fit snugly.”

“Muscular,” said Kelleher.

“Yes, I would say so.”

Smeins described a burly suspect, twenty-six to thirty years old, with blue-brown eyes, a slitlike mouth, low-set ears, and vaguely simian features. “He kept his face averted. He was short and heavyset, about 5’ 8” and weighed around 180-190 pounds. But he could have been taller and heavier. I got the impression he was crouching. He had a powerful build—broad chest, long arms, wide shoulder, and short legs. Huge hands and a large head. He had a strong lower jaw and enlarged canine teeth. I would say he had light to medium-brown hair and a tanned, weather-beaten complexion.”

“Like that of a seafaring man,” said Kelleher. “Our killer is a sailor.”

“Mr. Meyers had huge hands and massive shoulders—like those of an ape.”

“A gorilla man,” said Desmond. A Gorilla Man! He looked to Desmond. It couldn’t be happening again.

“I’d know him if I saw him again,” said Smeins. “When Mr. Meyers came down into the lobby about 4:30 A.M., his coat collar was turned up around his neck and his face was partially hidden. He wore his hat pulled low. It was a porkpie, a snapbrim with a low flat crown. He was all ready to go out into the rain. He kept his hands in his pockets.”

“He plunged his hands inside his pockets to hide bloodstains on them,” said Kelleher glumly.

“And he pulled the hat down to hide any scratches on his face,” added Desmond. “Did he say anything more?”

“Well, the bloke said to call them about 10:00 A.M. He said his wife was hungry and asked me where he could get some sandwiches. He had a soft melodious voice, I remember that much. As I recall his actual words were, ‘It’s hell with these women. All they want is beer and sandwiches before they’ll go to sleep. That damn woman is sending me out for beer and sandwiches.’ I told him where he might get some sandwiches on Market Street and he went sauntering out the door. He walked with a kind of gait, on the flat of his feet. I thought it was a bit queer at the time. He was whistling nonchalantly and gave out a kind of queer little laugh. He laughed all the way out. I thought it might be the oddest laugh I’ve ever heard. And when he didn’t show up again and knowing what you’ve told me now I’m positive it was. He still hadn’t come back when I went off duty at 7:00 A.M.”

The cat purred contentedly at the skeleton’s feet. The tiny claws flexed. The solid ticks of the clock sounded as Smeins, unblinking, stared at them in silence. The detectives left after Smeins promised to try to remember more about the sailor who had stopped at the Bay Hotel. Smeins sat down to think, then leaped up and went for the phone.

 

 

 

 

 

SMEINS’S
very remarkable portrait of “Mr. Meyers,” a unique man described by another unique man, was disseminated by the communications room at the HOJ to all Bay Area law enforcement agencies. By Teletype, phone, and radio they broadcast a description of what could only be a human gorilla who used a razor to kill. On the Embarcadero, speeding growlers were reflected in the rain-slick streets, black upon black punctuated by flashing red. Chief Quinn’s Flying Squad gunned their motorcycles and roared from the HOJ like hunting animals. These ninety men and forty-five sidecar units had proven to be the SFPD’s most efficient pursuit vehicles, outperforming the Buick town cars. At 6:00 P.M., Captain Dullea, because of the serious nature of the crime, assigned dozens of his detectives to fan out over the Embarcadero. “He’s a husky man with big hands, broad shouldered and hunched like a gorilla,” he told them. “He’s very strong. Spread out and search the docks, search ships and seaman’s hangouts. It’s our only chance—our one lead.”

Night fell, and the slanting rain ceased. In his small office, Dullea was troubled. The site of the murders—the third floor, and the method of murder—a strangling by a beastlike killer with huge hands, reminded him of the Gorilla Man. But he could not reasonably connect the two. He was dead, wasn’t he? He had died in Canada, hadn’t he? Yet for the second time in his career Dullea and his men were on the lookout for a Gorilla Man who strangled his female victims in rooming houses and hotels. He pushed back his chair, rose, and walked to a wall map to consider the avenues of escape from the city. There weren’t many.

There was no Bay Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge yet, though both were under construction, had been for years. Yes, thought Dullea, the unfinished frameworks taking shape in the Bay would have been useless to the fugitive. The only ways to reach the city were by rail and auto up the peninsula from the south or across the Bay by boat and ferry. The region’s forty-three ferryboats, each splashed a different color, provided frequent and reliable service across the Bay to and from the Alameda and Marin County shores. And though the lights on the Ferry Building footbridge were left on after midnight and the terminus lit on the upper floors, the last ferry had left at 11:35 P.M. This meant that no means of transportation across the Bay would have been available until four hours after Mr. Meyers left the Bay Hotel laughing. Perhaps someone on the Embarcadero had seen a husky man loitering at 4:30 A.M., waiting for the ferries to start running.

“You know,” said La Tulipe, “I’m certain the killer’s clothes might still be stained even after twelve hours. That job was bloody work. Workers don’t wash often on the docks. Search the Embarcadero for someone wearing bloodstained clothes.” Dullea amended his bulletin. “Be on the lookout for any suspect matching the above description who might have bloodstains on his clothing or scratches on his face or hands,” he ordered.

The cops got lucky almost immediately. Down by the Ferry Building they dragged in a big fisherman who matched the description and had an enormous amount of blood on his greasy clothes. “Are you Mr. Meyers?” the cops asked wolfishly, hot on the scent and licking their chops.

Forthwith, LaTulipe began a precipitant test on the fisherman’s jeans. Preparing a supersensitive solution of benzidine, he moistened the material with pyridine. He could verify that the blood was human and not animal by viewing the red corpuscles. Using a handheld lens, he watched for a clouding that never came. It wasn’t human blood. “Forget it boys,” he said. “It’s probably only shark blood. Besides, Mr. Meyers was described as well dressed.” LaTulipe was still troubled by the lack of blood in the hotel room. Where had it gone?

In his office, Dullea, working in his shirtsleeves as he customarily did, shuttled between his two small desks comparing reports. In the background an old dilapidated radio spit static as lightning crackled far out to sea. Dullea frowned. The drunken reporters on the second floor had “traded” their antique radio for his new model. Someday he intended to make a counter raid and snatch it back.

Chief Quinn had crammed all the reporters, photographers, hangers-on, bailiffs, deputies, and tipsters into two small, high-ceilinged rooms with peeling paint and floors littered with cigarette butts. The reporters played pinochle, rummy, and poker. Blue and red poker chips piled up and ashtrays spilled over. They sipped cold coffee, swam in clouds of tobacco smoke, and extinguished their butts in their cups.

Yawning, Hank Peters glanced at his cards, then through the begrimed window. Rain was falling outside again. Eddie Gillen, pecking out a report on his Remington, dropped a butt on the floor and ground it under his heel. Charlie Huse, shoes off, was trying to grab a few winks on the broken leather couch by a marble-floored bathroom that contained a single toilet for them all.

Across the hall was a courtroom. On the southern side was a rabbit warren of rooms where police questioned prostitutes. Dullea coveted this area for his captains’ offices, but Chief Quinn had his own plans for this prime real estate. Because the dirty windows admitted scant light in the Press Room, the reporters kept the overhead light burning all day. By day a little light spilled from the sash windows into an open light well connecting to the grim city prison above. Swirling in the crosscurrents, the reporters’ smoke was sucked up the light well. Whenever the reporters needed information from the criminal court, they simply yelled up to the duty sergeant at his desk.

In well-administrated police departments detained persons are taken to the district station, where the duty sergeant reviews the detention, asks the patrolman for the circumstances of the arrest, determines what evidence has been collected, and determines whether any further follow-up is appropriate. Then he reviews the arrest report before submitting it to the lieutenant for final approval. Not in San Francisco. There, detained prisoners go directly to the HOJ, where the station sergeant acts only as a receptionist who performs record-keeping chores and keeps an accurate accounting of property.

In the north wing of the jail, Superintendent Bernard Reilly slumped at his high wooden bench at the visitor’s cage. Twenty feet away a guard paced the narrow corridor, waiting to escort another manacled prisoner along that hallway known as the “Bridge of Sighs.” Next door to the HOJ, a few off-duty policemen were taking the edge off a grueling day at Cookie Picetti’s Star Bar. Some were drunk. But drunk, sober, or bored—they all waited. Dullea waited, too.

Mike Brown, still shaken, delivered the body of Mrs. Meyers to the City Morgue on dingy Merchant Street. This cold, bleak place across the alley from the HOJ was marked by a blue light, just as the murder room had been. Brown waited until Dullea came down from his office and met him at the rear door. Sergeant Birdsall, who had bundled up the woman’s clothing, awkwardly held the garments away from himself. Dullea took them. If all else failed, he hoped to trace the victim’s identity through the small felt hat, cheap print dress, cloth coat, and tattered underwear.

“In the coroner’s gloomy establishment downstairs,” Dullea said later, “the inspectors and I went carefully over the clothing she had been wearing as Ray Brooker the deputy coroner prepared a written record which reflected type, size, color, store labels and laundry markings.”

Dullea studied a typed carbon copy as Brooker wired an identification tag to each article. Then with a camera with a double-extension bellows, he snapped three close-up photos of the razor with the broken handle. He also fingerprinted the body—standard procedure.

“I rushed to the office of Dr. Adolphus A. Berger, the city autopsy surgeon,” Dullea said, “and told him, ‘Post mortem her as you never post mortemed anyone before. I need to know exactly
when
she died,
why
and by exactly
what
means she was killed, so that I can find out
who
was responsible. ’”