At two o'clock I contacted Pat and made a date to meet him at his office. He didn't like the idea because he knew Grebb would want to sit in on the conversation but thought he could arrange it so we could be alone.
I took a cab downtown, found Pat alone at his desk buried in the usual paperwork, waited for him to finish, then said, 'What officers were in on the Motley holdup? Any still around?'
'This your day for surprises?'
'Hit me.'
'Inspector Grebb was one. He was a beat cop who was alerted for the action.'
'Oh hell.'
'Why?'
'Think he'd remember the details?'
'I don't remember Grebb ever forgetting anything.'
'Then let's call him in.'
'You sure about this?' Pat asked me.
'It's the easy way. So we give him a bite after all.'
Pat nodded, lifted, the phone, and made a call. When he hung up he said, 'The Inspector will be happy to see you.'
'I bet.'
It didn't take him long to get up there. He didn't have Charlie Force with him either. He came in with the patient attitude of the professional cop, always ready to wait, always ready to act when the time came. He might have been a tough, sour old apple, but he made it the hard way and you couldn't take it away from him.
Inwardly I laughed at myself because if I wasn't careful I could almost like him.
'Whose party is it this time?' he asked.
Pat said, 'He's throwing it.'
'I never thought you'd ask, Hammer.' He dragged a chair out with his foot, sat in it heavily and sighed, but it was all an act. He was no more tired or bored than I was. 'Shoot,' he said.
'Pat tells me you were in on the Motley thing thirty years ago.'
'My second day on the beat, Hammer. That shows you how close to retirement I am. My present job is a gratuity. One last fling for the old dog in a department he always wanted to run.'
'Better luck in your next one.'
'We aren't talking about that. What's with the Motley job?'
'How did the cops get wise?'
'Why don't you read the transcript of the trial? It was mentioned.'
'This is easier. Besides, I wanted to be sure.'
Grebb pulled a cigar from his pocket, snapped off the end, and fired it up. 'Like a lot of big ones that went bust,' he said, 'somebody pulled the cork. The department got a call. It went through the D.A.'s office.'
'Torrence?'
'No, one of the others got it and passed it to him. Torrence handled it personally though.'
'Where were you?'
'Staked out where the truck was hidden in case they got through somehow. They never made it. We got the truck and the driver. Second day on the beat too, I'll never forget it. Fresh out of school, still hardly shaving, and I get a hot one right off. Made me decide to stay in the department.'
'How long did you have to get ready?'
'About an hour, if I remember right. It was plenty of time. We could have done it in fifteen minutes.'
'They ever find out who made the call?'
'Nope.'
'They look very hard?'
Grebb just shrugged noncommittally. Then he said, 'Let's face it, we'd sooner have stoolies on the outside where they can call these things in than a live guy testifying in court who winds up a dead squealer a day later. We didn't break our backs running down anybody. Whoever it was played it the way we liked it. The job was a bust and we nailed the crew.'
'It wasn't a bust, Inspector.'
He stared at me until his face hurt.
'Nobody ever located the money.'
'That's happened before. One of those things.'
'Blackie Conley simply disappeared.'
The cigar bobbed in his mouth. 'And if he lived very long afterward he's a better man than I am. By now he'd be dead anyway.' He took the cigar away from his mouth and flipped the ash off with his pinky. 'But let's get back to the money... that's the interesting part.'
'I have an idea it might show up.'
'Maybe we better listen to your idea.'
'Uh-uh. Facts I'll give you, ideas stay in my pocket until I can prove them out.'
'Facts then.'
'None you don't already have if you want to check the transcript like you suggested. I just make something different out of them, that's all.'
Grebb put the cigar back between his teeth and pushed himself out of his chair. When he was on his feet he glanced at Pat meaningfully, said, 'Don't let me wait too long, Captain,' then went out.
'I wish you'd quit pushing him,' Pat told me. 'Now what's with this bit?'
I sat in the chair Grebb had vacated and propped my feet on Pat's desk. 'I think Blackie Conley's alive.'
'How'd he do it?'
'He was the planner behind the operation. He set it up, then phoned in a double-cross. Trouble was, he should have cut it shorter. He almost lost it himself. He laid out one escape plan, but took an alternate. He got away in that cab with the three million bucks and sat on it someplace.'
Pat tapped a pencil on the desk as I gave him the information Annette Lee gave me. Every once in a while he'd make a note on a pad, study it, then make another.
'We'll have to locate whatever records are left of Howie Green's business. If he was dealing in real estate it will be a matter of public record.'
'You don't think Blackie would use his own name, do you?'
'We can narrow it down. Look, check your file on Green.'
Pat put in another call and for the twenty minutes it took to get the papers up we went over the angles of the case. I still wouldn't lay it out the way I saw it, but he had enough to reach the same conclusion if he thought the same way.
The uniformed officer handed Pat a yellowed folder and Pat opened it on his desk. Howie Green, deceased. Known bootlegger, six arrests, two minor convictions. Suspected of duplicity in a murder of one Francis Gorman, another bootlegger who moved into his territory. Charge dropped. Known to have large holdings that were legally acquired as far as the law could prove. His annual income made him a rich man for the times. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver not far from his own house and the date given was three days before the robbery of the three million bucks.
'Pretty angle, Pat.'
'Spell it out.'
'If Conley did get hideout property from Green, paid for it, made the transaction, and accepted the papers in a phony name and took possession, then killed him before Green knew what he wanted it for, who could say where he was? Chances were that nobody but Conley and Green ever saw each other and Green wasn't around to talk any more.'
Pat closed the folder and shoved it in his desk. 'We could check all the transactions Green made in the few weeks prior to his death.'
'Time, buddy. We haven't got the time.'
'But I have one thing you don't have.'
I knew what he was going to say.
'Men. We can put enough troops on it to shorten the time.'
