The Laughing Gorilla (12 page)

On October 22, the gang found the cupboard bare at the Challenge Creamery and retreated so rapidly they left their best small drills behind.

The Phantom’s end came at 10:45 P.M. on November 11 (Armistice Day). Mary Mardueno, an attractive dark-bobbed woman, noticed a light across the street from her tiny flat and went to her window overlooking the Majestic Bottling Plant at 36 Beideman. Across the wide thoroughfare, shafts of light were darting about the topmost floor. When they blacked out, Mary retired. At 11:57 P.M., a heavy roar shook her from her cozy bed. As she dialed the Western Addition Police Station, the concussion was still rumbling through the neighborhood and rattling window panes. Officer John “Andy” Johnson, a blond, triangular-faced young man, who was about to go off duty, snatched up the receiver. “There’s been an explosion at the Majestic Bottling Works,” Mary cried. “Wait, I can see lights inside again. . . . I think they’re burglars. . . . Yes! Hurry. Hurry! You can still catch them.”

Sergeant Michael McCarthy, Andy, and five heavily armed uniformed officers in Sam Browne belts raced to the plant. “You are to hinder any escape by those still inside until we know what the hell’s going on,” McCarthy ordered.

He stationed officers McNally, Desmond, and Nilan at the front, Jim Casey at the rear, and Tom Miller and Andy in the main yard. When Andy heard faint scuffling at the far end, he scaled the fence and crawled into the open space, when a cough from behind a pyramid of packing crates alerted him. He climbed over an iron grill into an alley and shone his flashlight up a ladder tilted against the building. Two men in white masks and leather gloves were cowering at the top. One was lean, sleepy-eyed, and unshaven; the other was a neckless, crop-eared giant with a can-shaped head, and toothbrush mustache.

Though he didn’t know it, Andy had half the White Mask Gang in his light. Passing his prisoners off at the front gate, he returned and heard a long, weary sigh from inside the plant. Inside, he apprehended a third man in a long black coat.

“Don’t,” the tall man mumbled. “Oh, for heaven’s sake . . . get me out of here.” The man licked his lips. “Don’t take me in. For the love of God, please let me go. You know me, Johnson. I’m an officer with the police. You know what this means to me. For God’s sake stand aside!”

“You . . . you stand there!” said Andy, confused at finding an officer he had known for over a year in such hot water. Suddenly, he sighted a fourth man and gave chase. “Stay there,” he called back.

The tall man fled, but was halted by Casey at the rear gate. “Who are you?” Casey demanded, covering him through the steel grill. “I am a police officer. Let me out . . . the gate—Wait, I will convince you. See.” He held a gold-encrusted star into the flashlight beam, but kept his thumb over the badge number and his hand up to his face as he backed away, smiling, waving, smiling and saying, “No problem . . . no problem . . .”

In the top floor office, Andy smelled the strong odor of explosives. He called Dullea, who pulled on a hound’s-tooth suit, four-button vest, and gray hat and hurried to the scene, sleepy but excited. At last, some of the White Mask Gang was in custody! Leslie Orlandi, general manager of the plant, theorized the gang had entered through the basement by wriggling under a loading platform, opened a rear door facing the yard, and propped up a ladder for a quick getaway.

“Because they couldn’t drill the door open,” said Dullea, “they went back and got some nitro. They used too much and that’s what woke Mrs. Mardueno. The strong blast only bulged out the sides of the safe, blowing open the combination, but failing to force open the inner strongbox. They must have run outside, then driven around the neighborhood to see if anyone had heard the explosion, then returned to the plant. They waited around the safe too long deciding what to do next. That’s how we surprised them.”

“Too bad they didn’t know the safe was empty,” said Orlandi grinning. “Six days ago, Election Day, it was full.”

Dullea inventoried the abandoned paraphernalia—an empty burlap bag, a square copper hammer, an assortment of chisels and drills, and, most interesting of all, a small loose-leaf binder containing a mimeographed instruction book titled
The Manual of Safes.
“This tells how to open safes,” he said. “It’s a reference work for locksmiths or, in this case, safecrackers.”

The author’s name had been razored off. Under “Dials,” the 120-page typewritten handbook listed “Alpine, Champion, Hall, Liberty, McNeil & Urban, Phoenix, Reliable and Victor.” It contained information about drilling positions, explosives, and diagrams of dials, handles, corners, and acorns. It even advertised a tool to determine the combination of all wafer safes.

Forty minutes later Andy drove to Tatham’s house for advice. “There’s been a big safe job at the Majestic bottling plant,” he said, “and we got two suspects in cuffs—Richard Frank [aka “Richard Frombee” and “Albert Wiener”] of 1595 Golden Gate Avenue and Kenneth “Tiny” Meyers [aka “Edward Martin” and “Clarence Wilson”] of 3578 California Street. When I went into the building I found this Station Officer. I told him to stand there. I chased a fourth man who had gone out the window, but he got away. When I returned the other man was gone.”

Tatham realized he had momentarily detained the Phantom himself. “Johnson recognized the man,” he said, “but what could I do? The man in question was an officer and hadn’t been caught doing anything. The next day at dawn, trying to get more information, Inspector O’Neill and I drove to the City Prison to question Meyers and Frank in their cells. Meyers, though often arrested for robbery and burglary, invariably ‘beat the rap,’ at least on every San Francisco case.
⁵
I asked Meyers if there were more than three men in the gang and Tiny named Frank Fitzpatrick as one.”

Tatham knew Fitzpatrick, a former bootlegger, as one of a gang of burglars once protected by Frank Egan. But nothing in his background would enable him to be a master safecracker. “We drove to Fitzpatrick’s fifth floor Broderick Street apartment, but the room was ransacked. He had flown the coop. We went next to Richard Frank’s cell.”

“Meyers confessed there were four in the gang,” Tatham told him.

“Meyers has said a lot of things he shouldn’t have,” said Frank.

“Well, what were you doing in the Majestic Bottling Plant at night? You are a two-time loser, aren’t you?”

Frank then admitted Tiny had spoken the truth but demanded a deal before he named the fourth man. Instead, Tatham returned him to the holding tank at the end of a row of steel cages and asked Meyers, “Wasn’t a policeman in on it?”

“Yes. He planned most of the jobs, sized up the safes to be blown and participated in the dynamiting operations. When he cased the Majestic Bottling Plant, he rented a flat on the O’Farrell Street side of the building and studied the comings and goings of the workers with binoculars for over a week.”

The Phantom held a post at a district police station. Tiny preferred to write the name rather than speak it. “As I read the name it was still a stunning revelation,” said Tatham. “It was monstrous, this charge from Meyers—it left me ragged and numb, this ghastly thing. A policeman, a man sworn to enforce the law—consorting with cracksmen and thieves. . . . It was beyond conception! I mulled it over until my head ached.”

At the District Station the night of the Majestic robbery the Jekyll and Hyde cop had returned unexpectedly from a ten-day sick leave. This upstanding policeman, assigned to the waterfront during the strike, had been a secret partner in a garage at 351 Valencia Street with Paul Schainman, a narcotics dealer, counterfeiter, and killer who was serving time in the Nevada State Prison. Dullea, sickened by this disgraceful breach of faith, labored all Friday night, November 16, building a case. He could not in his heart differentiate between this betrayal and that of Frank Egan. The Phantom had been a trusted friend, mentor, and fellow officer. It broke his heart.

Saturday morning, gaiety reigned on the docks where the White Mask Gang had ruled so cruelly. A robust legion of confetti throwers were jubilant as the
President Cleveland
, under Captain Bob Carey, sailed away to the Islands and the Orient. As festive vacationers departed, Captain Bernard McDonald of Richmond Station solemnly drove to the Sunset District. He passed the gang’s hideout at 727 Forty-third Avenue and parked down the street at 811 Forty-third. He trudged grimly up the walk to a comfortable but not extravagant home and rang the bell. A haggard man in civilian clothes answered. “You’re wanted at the Hall right away,” McDonald said sternly.

He drove the man, now attired in police uniform, up Kearney Street to Portsmouth Square and lower Chinatown to the HOJ. Dullea, Quinn, and Commissioner Roche were waiting inside the chief’s office.

“I have nothing to say except that I am not guilty,” the man told them.

“Make a report of your activities for the twenty four hours on the day of the Majestic burglary,” said Quinn.

“I spent the day at home,” he said, “but during the afternoon I took a walk and got a shave. I am not guilty—I did not do the things they charge me with. Are you going to take the word of a patrolman who doesn’t like me against my word? I can assure you, I can prove my innocence. This is a frame-up.”

When Tiny Meyers was brought face to face with him, he said instantly, “That’s the man!”

Quinn suspended the officer, and Roche stripped him of his star, police revolver, and handcuffs. Captain McDonald and Inspectors William Gilmore and Ray O’Brien escorted the prisoner upstairs to the City Prison, where he printed his name in the big book on the booking sergeant’s desk. They locked him in a felony cell, but kept Frank and Meyers confined in separate tanks. “It was with great reluctance,” said Roche on the steps outside, “that we took the action we did. We certainly did not proceed on the unsupported word of Meyers. We made an exhaustive investigation. We are satisfied that the evidence against the prisoner is strong enough to warrant that action. He will be tried in court as would any citizen. We’re on our way to his home to tell his wife. I would much rather tell her that her husband was dead.”

Quinn only extolled the officer’s impeccably long service. “His record had been without a blemish and outstanding,” he said.

The defendant’s lawyer, John J. Taaffe, alleged a frame-up in language so blue he almost came to blows with Tatham. Tatham ended the matter by stalking away. On November 20, the grand jury, after a five-hour session, indicted the officer for burglary with explosives. Through his official position, he had been able to check the activities of beat and special officers.

On January 23, 1935, as extraordinarily high seas capsized three boats off Bay Point, the convicted officer was brought in shackles into superior court. Against the turbulent background, Judge I. L. Harris’s face was stormlike. “You have the mark of Cain on you,” he said. “You have violated the trust of the people of San Francisco. . . . You are a man who has humiliated himself and brought dishonor and disgrace to the service.”

He sentenced the turncoat cop to fifteen years. A witness further implicated the turncoat in a Los Angeles robbery, which got him another fifteen years. “I told you at the time I would see you again,” Mrs. Ella King said. “I remember your face very well.”

DA Brady contacted the State Board of Prison Terms and Paroles and urged the limit. “He is a peculiarly antisocial person,” he wrote. “He saw fit to aid in the perpetration of the very crime he was supposed to prevent, and my experience with such persons is that they rarely change.”

At the prisoner’s request Dullea was to visit the Phantom at Folsom Prison on Saturday, February 23. He showered, donned a freshly pressed suit, and made the lonely drive over pitted roads to the prison. In January, on an exceptionally cold day, Deputy Sheriff Al Parker and three of the traitor’s fellow cops had driven the prisoner along the same route and watched the iron gates slam behind him. Inside, he had been assigned a number, sprayed with DDT powder, and confined in a cell—seven feet by nine feet by eight feet furnished with a dirty sink, a lidless toilet bowl, and four metal shelves on L-braces, which supported two upper and two lower bunks for three other men.

Dullea checked his gun, entered a small gray room, and studied the concrete gun towers and marching convicts in formation outside the barred window. Guards ushered in a stolid, hatchet-faced man who slumped onto a wooden bench. Dullea cast his eyes on “a pathetic creature,” a doting husband, father, and respected officer with years of immaculate service. Now he was a broken man, head lowered, face pale, and hair gone completely gray. His hands were calloused from hard labor at the rock quarry. His chest was racked with sobs. Dullea shook his head. By God, he would never have suspected
him
of being the Phantom. The prisoner composed himself and looked up at Dullea.

“Gambling led me to crime and gambling took every dollar I made. I just want to say I am sorry, Charlie,” Sergeant Oliver L. Hassing sobbed.

Dullea turned his back on the Dutchman, the role model of his youth. “Frankly I don’t care,” he said, and left.

—JOHN WALSH
, POE THE DETECTIVE

 

 

 

 

 

THE
night was clear and crisp, yet the odd apelike figure remained unresolved and broken, reforming as it lumbered from one shadow to another. It moved in a peculiar flat-footed shamble. A streetlight cast its shadow raggedly against a brick wall—that of a heavyset figure with short legs, sloping shoulders, and arms striking in their length—unnaturally long, like those of a gorilla. The light of an approaching auto made his eyes momentarily gray, then blue-brown and yellow where the beams flared. Where his coat collar was turned up a neat triangle of bronze showed in the vee. With his broad shoulders stooped, head down, and arms hanging at his side, with all extraneous detail removed, the silhouette could have been that of an ape.