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Make friends with the cops. It never hurts to have a friend with a handcuff key.
~Lou Tanner, P.I., Notes for female Pemberton Graduates, 1935
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A REGULAR HACK. YEAH, I lucked out and found one of the City’s ten real cabbies. Dropped me off at Drumm and Washington Streets.
The San Francisco Police Department, Homicide and Vice Division, looked like every police set up you ever saw in the picture shows. I felt a little twinge of guilt: old desks, beaten up chairs, files stacked to the ceiling, mail delivery ‘Bots sliding awkwardly up and down rusting cables, and a fleet of cars from 1922, I’d walked past on the way in. Chairs looked to be older than me, and the desks were positively ancient. My new office was better by far. Newer, cleaner, more graciously appointed, compared to this joint.
Marley finagled the name of a Vice cop who might give me some details. She warned me he had a thorn under his saddle about Willkie Valentini. She didn’t warn me enough. Newspaper men got their statements from Detective Sergeant Milton Somerset every time Valentini was into something nasty — by implication or otherwise. And every time, Valentini wiggled out of it.
It was no surprise to me when Somerset stopped watching me from an impolite distance, put down his cup of coffee, and acquiesced to speak to me, he looked like he lived his life as a three-act play about frustration and disappointment. He was medium height and broad in the chest. He wore a light brown, narrow-brimmed Tyrolean, complete with wide hat band, narrow brim, and ity-bity feather, which made his head look a little too small in comparison with the rest of him. Nobody at home making sure he dressed right. His shirt had seen better days but was clean and neat — professional laundry style. His muscles pressed out from underneath, and, as he casually disrobed his coat in front of me, he kept a brown cigarette clamped in his down-turned mouth. Cheap smokes. Clean shaven — just to be sure everyone noted the frown lines around his mouth and the small dimple in his chin. On the street, I would mistake him for a former boxer-turned-manager.
Rolling up his sleeves, he revealed a set of thick-veined forearms, took his seat, and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. No handshake?
He looked me over hard, like he’d seen me somewhere before. He’d been looking at me since I moment I walked in and asked for him. Then he held my badge with disrespect and even held it up to the light, as if it were a fake. I was expecting him to try to bend it with his teeth, as if it were a forged coin made from cheap metal.
Tossing it over to me, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across a taught-muscled abdomen. “You wanna’ know about a friend of Willkie Valentini? You’ve come to the right place, Toots. What do you want to know? Did he lose a pet dog and you’re looking for it? Can’t he find his house keys?” Such a nasty sting to his words. Bitter. Disappointed. Angry.
“Nah, I’m here to waste your time.” That didn’t come out the humorous way I wanted it to, but sure came out the way I was feeling. Sarcasm was my best friend, most of the time. This time, perhaps not so much.
He glared at me. No sense of humor. Can’t take that route with him.
“I'm quite serious, Detective, I’m here to find out if the SFPD’s expert on a notorious bad guy ever heard of a gal named Francis Coventry and can tell me about her.”
He attempted to hide a laugh by staring at the ceiling for a moment. “Frannie, huh? What’s she done now? Fleeced another lover? Is her mommy pissed off at her again?”
“From what I hear, there’s an unlimited number of reasons Irenie Coventry might be mad.”
“And you want information, for free?”
“Better to hear it from you than spending hours in the library, looking at microfiche copies of the papers. Besides, you now more than the paper men.” A truthful compliment, I hoped he’d accept. Hook the fish with bait not stone, as my Gran would say.
He bit. “Sure, I do. What’s in it for me? Why should I tell you anything?”
“I like to have friends in high places. I like smart friends in smart places even better. I’m not after Mr. Valentini. I just want to learn a bit about Frannie and how she links up to Valentini.”
I opened up my special, make friends cigarette case and offered him one. Each one of those cigarettes was worth a whole pack of the regular stuff. Quality. I don’t mind investing in conversation starters.
Intrigued, he leaned forward to look. After giving me the once over again, which sent blood rushing to my cheeks, he took two cigarettes.
I didn’t think one of those cigarettes would be lit and offered back to me, so I closed the case and waited while he stoked up one and pocketed the second. Other than showing up with coffee and doughnuts, I figured good tobacco was another way to warm up a cop.
“Also, Detective, I’m on the level. Willkie Valentini is yours. All yours. I’m only looking for some background on Frannie. Anything bad points to Valentini, I’ll give you the goods. No holding back. That’s a long-term promise.”
He thought about it, while enjoying his smoke. I figured he’d already decided to share but liked to appear thoughtful, and maybe just a little bit like he controlled the deck. For the moment, he did. I respected that.
“Not enough.”
This guy takes bribes in the middle of PD HQ?
He breathed out a puff of smoke. “Who you’re working for and how the hell some doll got past County officials to win one of those,” he pointed to my badge. “I think you either have something on a county official or flirted your way in. That’s what I think.”
What was I thinking? I know. I was thinking, Look, Sparky, you don’t know me from Eve. I worked hard to earn my piece of bronze you were pitching around like a horseshoe. This was my career. Career, you goon! Why I became a P.I. was none your damn business. For the record, I was fed up having to do better and more just so that some low-brow, flatfoot like you can sit on your ass, smoking my cigarettes and staring down your nose at me. If I didn’t look so lousy in black and white stripes, I’d sock you in the yap and try to slap some common curtesy into you.
What I said, however, while every angry thought raced around in my head, was, “Meet you half way, Detective. I give you my story and everything, except the name of my client. You know, and I know, that information is confidential. Everything else up front and cricket.”
“Yeah, well you know, and I know that if I find out your pretty little badge is a pretty little fake, I’ll throw your pretty little ass into the clink.”
Okay, big boy, I can play this game too. “You know, and I know, my license is not fake, and neither is my promise to give you anything I learn about Valentini. He’s bad news and you’re after him. I’m not planning on getting in your way and I can even help.” I stared him straight in the peepers and I still wasn’t sure if he would blow up or calm down. Instead, he laughed.
“Okay, Dollface. I’ll bite — for now.” He dragged twice on the cigarette and exhaled in my direction. What a Gent. “What have you got so far, Toots?”
A searing hatred for being dismissed and diminished by being called Dollface and Toots. “Frannie’s a wild child. A parent’s worst nightmare. Hangs out with the wrong crowd. Not the apple of her doting mother’s eye?”
“You’re right. A doting mother? That ain’t Irenie. Have you met Irenie?”
“Not yet. I came here to sharpen my claws on your desk first. That way anyone else I need to contact will think I’m a pussycat. Tell me about Irenie. What should I expect?”
“She’s a real piece of work. Managed to snag some sap who gave her two favorite things in the world – money and status.”
The “sap” was my client, but I kept my expression neutral.
He kept going. “She’d sell her own daughter. May have, though we haven’t caught her doing it yet. I get the idea Frannie has some sense, but she’s made some pretty bad choices, Valentini being one of them.” For half a second, an expression of sadness and resignation controlled his features, then he tightened up. “Truth is, Irenie is more jealous of her own daughter than anyone else, and that says something. Still,” he inhaled, “she protects that girl.”
“Maybe she has a little bit of mothering in her?” The end of my sentence raised — I anticipated what he might say.
“In Irenie? Hell no. She sees Frannie as income, nothing more.”
“Anything else?”
“If she invites you to one of her salons, don’t go.”
“Oh?”
A darling, roly-poly man wandered up. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Somerset, but twice as round, and he had a neat moustache, clean suit, and a warm handshake. “This is the lady dick everyone’s talkin’ about? You didn’t say she was nice looking lady dick. Gee, you’re sweet,” he gave Somerset the stink-eye, I suppose for not making a better introduction. “Detective Bernard Rollins, but you can call me Bennie.”
I took his hand, like one of the boys, and gave him a handshake worth remembering. “Hello Bennie. You can call me Lou.”
“Ain’t that swell? She even sounds like a real Shamus.”
“Probably ‘cause I am a real Shamus. Ain’t that swell?”
Somerset blew his smoke over at Rollins. “What do you want, Bennie?”
“Heard this lady might have some info on Willkie Valentini. Whaddya got, Honey?”
“A missing person case,” Somerset snarled at him before I could reply.
What was between those two men was not a friendship, but then sometimes you don’t get lucky in your partners and colleagues. I didn’t doubt Somerset would go to the moon for Rollins, and vice versa, if for no other reason than they shared dangers and goals. And the blue uniform.
Didn’t mean they were friends. In fact, my woman’s intuition said they didn’t like each other much.
“I’m looking for Frannie Coventry,” I said before Somerset, taking control the conversation away from him. “Rumor has it she’s friends with Valentini.”
“Nobody’s friends with Valentini,” Rollins said. “He just puts up with folks until he decides he doesn’t need them anymore.”
“Frannie?”
“She fit the bill for a moll. He put up with her, I gather. Can’t picture him falling for a broad. Can’t picture him caring enough about anyone else. He’s ugly that way.”
“Violent? That’s what the papers say.”
“The worst kind. Don’t matter if you’re a cop, a priest, or a kid. If you’re in Valentini’s way, you're as good as removed.”
Nice guy Frannie was associating with, but then I understood it as fact before I came in here. Valentini liked to make the papers. “Based on what you two have gathered over the last couple of years — sounds like Valentini got tired of Frannie.”
They looked at each other. Rollins shrugged. “If he has, she’s as good as gone. He doesn’t keep his molls around for more than six months.”
“Sounds about right for the timing. I understand she hooked up with Valentini about six months ago,” I shared. “What else can you tell me?”
“Shut your yap, Bennie. Don’t be such a sap for a girl with a badge. We don’t have time for a lost and found.” Somerset put out his cigarette.
Bennie rolled his eyes and then smiled for me. “Look, I don’t know if you’re on the level or not. But if you are, I hope you find her. Her mother won’t be of any help to you.”
Somerset waved his partner away. “Don’t waste your time. Keep your ears open, for where Valentini’s dumped the body, and keep your mouth shut, so you don't go catching his attention. Leave the rest to us. This is too big for you, sister. It was all too big for Frannie — she shouldn’t have gotten involved with Valentini. And neither should you.” He stood up, still not offering his hand. “Come on, Bennie. We have real work to do.”
Rollins looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry about him. He’s got one song to play in this band.”
“It’s called Getting Even with Willkie Valentini. And he plays it over and over and over.”
“That’s it. Listen, Honey, he does have a point. He’s been after Valentini for eight years now and he’s got nuthin’ to show for it. Slicker than a wet fish. I’m not sure who you should avoid or who you should visit, but whatever you do, don’t land in between Valentini and Milt Somerset. That’s where people die.”
“Even if his partner got in the way?”
“Oh, he’d shoot me first, then take on Valentini, if I got in his way.” Rollins laughed. I didn’t think it was so funny.
“Thank you,” I said, in earnest. “Bennie, here’s my card, in case you have anything for me. A pleasure meeting you.”
“Likewise, Lou. You be careful.”
I headed out of the department, stopping to look back. Rollins was chatting with another officer, I guessed he was explaining who the dame was. Somerset was glaring at me, studying me, over the other cigarette he’d taken. I got the message; he controlled the flow of information out of the Vice Squad. I got it, loud and clear.
Outside I sat down on a bench and took out my notebook. I was too new to the job to trust remembering everything. Word for word, I wrote it down, while it was still fresh in my bean.
So, I thought as I smoked one for the road, chances were good I'd face the infamous Willkie Valentini sooner rather than later.
But first — Irenie Coventry. The Dragon herself.