Kolchak The Night Strangler (11 page)

We stared at each other for quite a while. Then Schubert smiled and I had that old itchy feeling at the back of my neck.

“How long”—here it came -- “have you been in Seattle?”

“What the hell has that got to do with …?”

“How long have you been working for the
Chronicle
?”

“Almost two weeks? Why?”

“And did you not once work for the Las Vegas
Daily News
and leave their employ for rather personally embarrassing reasons?”

“I…”
“In the brief time you have been in our fair city… in the very short time you have been privileged to be a journalist in this town,
you
have ascertained exactly how we should conduct this case.”

“I’ve been a reporter for twenty-seven years!” (I counted my stint on Army papers in World War II and the part-time work I’d done while studying for a degree at Columbia.)

“I’ve been a policeman for
thirty
!”

Schubert stood up and loomed over me. I thought at first he was going to slug me. But he put his clenched fist down on his desk.

“I don’t like you, Mr. Kolchak. In fact, I might even say I dislike you
monumentally
! You have barged around this building as though it were your private club! You have interfered with police officers trying their damnedest to perform their sworn duty! You have strewn the streets of Seattle with your journalistic garbage! You have stepped on toes, muscled in, pushed, usurped and generally conducted yourself with all the grace and aplomb of a goddamn, one-man
Gestapo!!

“If…” he paused for breath. “If I see or hear from you again for some time… I will have you thrown in jail!!!”

“And
I’m telling
YOU there’s only FIVE days…”

“And
I
am telling you… to GET THE HELL OUT AND
STAY
THE HELL OUT! VANISH! BEGONE! CEASE AND DESIST OR
ELSE!!
”

Again we stared. And finally I shrugged. I turned to go. I opened his door and then turned for one more try.

“At least order a search of the Underground. That’s got to be where the killer is hiding!”

“Aha!” he roared, coming around his desk like a locomotive. “That’s where he
isn’t!
The Underground
was
searched. And we found nothing at all!”

He had me again.

“We did it,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “without consulting you,
Mister
Kolchak. I do
so
hope that was all right.

“Now beat it, you incompetent loudmouth.”

I could have kicked myself all the way back to the
Chronicle
. Kolchack and his big mouth! I had been in Seattle a scant three weeks, had alienated an entire police force, gotten 86’d from my beat, and would probably be out of a job by the time I returned to the office. I could already hear the phone lines crackling. Who the hell was I to tell the Seattle police how to run their town? Did I know any of them personally? Had I made a detailed study of the political structure of the community? Did
I
really know whether or not they were giving the case their best efforts? I did not. All I had to go on was the gut instinct that most cops are the same no matter where they work. And, that like most public officials, they had their own hides to protect.

Seattle, I had to remind myself, whatever coincidences seemed to befall me, was
not
Las Vegas, where, as the
Daily News’
assistant to the publisher, Bess Melvin, had said, “In Vegas we only ask, ‘Is it a page-one murder or a page-twelve murder?’ That’s how it is when you have three or four a week.” That’s how it is in a town where arson suspects can be found dead of “mysterious beatings” shortly after an arrest.

Seattle was definitely not Las Vegas. In fact, the city could boast the sharpest decline in serious crimes for 1971 of any major American city. There were 42 murders recorded there in 1971, which is considered “respectable” by the FBI for a metropolitan area containing more than a million persons (531,000 within the city limits; 1,935,000 in the Central Puget Sound area). While forcible rapes were up nearly a third, and aggravated assaults up a few percentage points, robberies were down slightly, as were grand larcenies, burglaries, and auto thefts.

Thus far in 1972, the murder totals for January, February and March were two, and one manslaughter (with no rapes and no auto thefts). For April, in addition to the five murders committed by the Pioneer Square Strangler, there was one homicide and three manslaughters, no rapes and two auto thefts.

No, I had blown it again. Lost my cool. And there’d be hell to pay. I was once told as a lad, when still very new in this news game, that I had a modicum of courage, an innate honesty, unbridled idealism and absolutely no sense of proportion. In plain English: I have never known when to let well enough alone.

When I walked into the news room, Janie was scowling as usual and pounding viciously at her Underwood, grumbling under her breath. I walked over to see what had got her riled up.

“Stupid jerks. Idiots. I might just have nailed the bastard.”

She regarded me balefully.

“Idiot policemen chased me off the streets last night. I was armed, for Pete’s sake. Had a hunk of lead from the composing room in a shoulder bag. But, oh no! The streets weren’t safe enough for little old me. So what happens? Hah! The killer strikes again! If I’d been out there I might have gotten him.”

“You might have gotten yourself killed, instead,” I mused.

“Killed! My Aunt Fanny’s behind! That gutless sneak only picks on weaklings. If I could back down Vincenzo, I could handle him.”

“Vincenzo is all mouth. This character means business. He
is
a killer.”

“So are some of the guys who come out of the woodwork with shotguns and Molotov cocktails every time there’s a cab war. They never chased me off the streets once, and I’m not about to let his coward get away with it.
Or
the boys in blue.”

She turned and went back to her grumbling.

I sat down at my desk and tried to organize my defenses. Vincenzo’s dulcet tones broke into my reverie. “Kolchak! You get your butt in here on the double!”

I took my time walking the thirty feet to his glassed-in sanctuary. He didn’t even fire a warning shot.

“I
warned
you the day you started at this paper! Crossbinder warned you! Didn’t we?
Didn’t we?
”

I was getting tired of our little game. “So what?”

“
So
… Schubert’s office just called Crossbinder. And Crossbinder just called me. And once again—thanks to you—I’m frying on the goddamn griddle!”

“Why?” I asked, trying to maintain that elusive cool.

“Why?
You have the nerve to ask me
why?
Are you for
real?
You barge into Schubert’s office and tell him—a man three times cited for bravery—how to run his case. And then you have the nerve, the goddamn nerve to waltz in here and ask me ‘
Why
?’”

“Tony! They don’t know what they’re doing. The killer’s down there in that Underground! I
know
he is!”

“
You
know. Okay. Okay! Then please tell this poor old editor this: Why the hell didn’t they find him?”

“Because he’s in a part that’s hidden. A part nobody knows about.”

“How
are
they supposed to find it, then?”

“Break down walls if they have to. Better yet—uncork the area. Send armed policewomen in. Girls who are experts in karate. The killer’s got to land his sixth victim by Tuesday.”

“Or…?”

“Or he disappears for another couple of decades.” A thought came to me. “The old man… he’s got a lot of clout, doesn’t he?”

“What are you getting at?” he asked, eyeing me as if I were a leper.

“You’ve got to talk him into pressuring the police; bringing him around to where they can see that I’m right, that what I say makes sense.”

Both Vincenzo’s eyebrows shot up. They fairly climbed into his hairline. “Do you realize what you’ve just said?”

“Of course I realize what I just said. I
said
it, didn’t I?”

Vincenzo walked around his desk and slumped in his chair. He picked up his pica pole and began tapping it against his left temple. Then he looked up very slowly and put the pole down on this desk very gently. But his color was rising… along with his blood pressure. He whipped off his dark glasses, coughed, and started rubbing his stomach with his free hand. I thought he might be getting ready to throw up.

“You tell me—the managing editor of a major city daily—that
I’ve
got to talk to the
owner
of that major city daily and
make
him
pressure
the
police
into doing what
you
say!!

“It’s finally happened, Kolchak. You’ve gone completely freako! You’ll be wearing robes and a crown next.”

“You gutless worm! One more crack about my mental stability and I’ll take your goddamn typewriter and bust your skull with it!”

Vincenzo grabbed a heavy, brass ashtray and heaved it at me. I ducked, and it bounced off the back of one of his padded armchairs across the room. I made a dive for his typewriter. It was heavier than I thought and my aim was off. To the accompaniment of Vincenzo’s bellow came the crash of his glass divider as the typewriter missed his head and went rocketing into the newsroom. The clatter of machines ceased as an audience began to gather.

“They really cut your guts out when they made you an M.E. and gave you this fancy office, didn’t they? You’ve sold out!”

“Sold out!” He came out swinging as I danced away, and he skidded heavily into the armchair, slumped onto it, and grabbed his stomach. The ulcer.

“You… miserable… egocentric sonofabitch. You’re off the story.”

“Why not fire me altogether?”

“I’ll fire you when I’m damn good and ready. And that will be
after
you pay for the typewriter
and
the window. It will be taken out of your paycheck in weekly installments.”

“Well, then…” and I walked over to the empty typewriter table, picked it up, walked back to the windowless divider and shoved it legs first into the unmarked wooden lower panel. “Add
that
to the bill. And when the repairs are made, I want every piece of glass and that particular panel sent to my place. I’m going to mount the panel and use the glass for your goddamn tires!”

I stormed out and sought refuge in the
Chronicle’s
morgue.

“Mr. Berry,” as he sat there placidly at his desk, “you are my last hope. Have you got anything at all?”

“Only one small item, I’m afraid.”

“Lay it on me. I’ll take anything right now.”

Berry retreated behind a stack of books and returned with a large scrapbook, opening it to a marked page as he laid it down before me. What was pasted inside was very old and very yellow. The edges had flaked away and lay in the center of the two pages, against the binding pegs.

INTERVIEW WITH MARK TWAIN

Noted Author Comments

On His Seattle Visit

“Mark Twain?”

Berry licked his lips. “Check the fifth paragraph down.”

Mr. Twain noted, with typical dryness of tone, that he had a most intriguing conversation with a local physician who claimed that physical immortality was not only possible but probably; indeed, completely practical.

Mr. Twain’s remark at this was …

“Mr. Berry…
this
is… ver-ry good!” I read on.

… said of the physician, identified as Dr. Richard Malcolm …

Malcolm. Malcolm. That name rang a bell somewhere. Malcolm. Malcrom? Doctor Malcrom. No. Impossible. Just another coincidence.

“Ah, Mr. Berry. Anything more on this Malcolm?”

“Only one small item at the moment.”