The Laughing Gorilla (37 page)

Though he calculated vice in the city grossed $1 million a year, the real figure was closer to $4 million. Gambling and prostitution alone accounted for $2.5 million. Atherton listed 135 houses of prostitution. There were actually 580, and 300 of those within arm’s length of the HOJ. The Palm Hotel was “close enough for the girls to read Chief Quinn’s morning mail without binoculars.” Atherton quit just short of any real information but leaked enough to terrify the SFPD brass.

At the HOJ, Dullea was despondent for the honest men on the force tarred by the same brush. He was sickened by the chief’s repression of any departmental dissent and apparent ignorance of widespread corruption. Much of the criminality could be laid at the chief’s feet because he was responsible for the tone of the department, even if it was one of favoritism and political influence. Dullea was working in his office when Chief Quinn entered. He stood at the window, legs apart, eyes sweeping the skeletal trees of Portsmouth Square. Yellow-eyed brewer’s blackbirds and starlings flitted in the lowering light. Quinn began to speak of his future. It was odd how Quinn, when he revealed his innermost thoughts and dreams, almost always turned his back on the listener.

“Charlie,” he said, his face briefly lit by his Optima cigar as he drew in smoke, “if all this should go away”—he swept out a beefy arm to encompass the room—“I would like to devote myself to radio work in which, as you know, I have had considerable experience and I modestly must say great success.” Fifteen years earlier commercial radio didn’t exist. Now it reached into almost every home.
¹⁸
Quinn loved radio and if given a choice would rather have gone into that field than be chief. During the hunt for Frank Egan, he had issued an effective plea over the radio and enlisted the public. As a child, he’d had a crystal set—a long stained board, mounted with a wooden tuning dial and a bit of quartz crystal beneath an inverted see-through glass guard and tuned with a roving “cat’s whisker.” Fifteen years earlier a radio you had to assemble cost $120. Preassembled radios now cost $5. Quinn was proud of his Atwater Kent from Ernest Ingold’s. The powerful one-dial, six-tube receiver in a two-tone brown crystalline case sat in a place of honor in his office. It had knobs for volume and tuning in stations, a lighted dial window, and a separate speaker resembling a circulating fan. Radio, which allowed eighty-five million Americans to escape the harsh realities, now seemed very inviting to the chief. It was now Tuesday, April 28. The events the next evening would be the first tentative cuts of the chisel into the big Irishman’s tombstone, though it was made of very tough granite.

 

 

IN
his cell on Alcatraz in the Bay, “Scarface” Al Capone, insane from syphilis, was thinking of grand juries. The quick-tempered mobster thought he had found a legal loophole that would free him. It relied on the use of “a” instead of “the” in a statute covering the manner in which grand juries may be extended. Captain Dullea was thinking of grand juries, too. On Wednesday, April 29, the anniversary of the murders of both Officer John Malcolm and Josie Hughes, Dullea took the elevator to the fifth floor of City Hall and sat down outside its largest, most ornate courtroom. At 8:00 P.M., the county grand jury convened. “The Grand Jury is inquiring into charges of corruption and rumors of graft and vice involving the SFPD,” jury foreman Mott Q. Brunton announced. How deeply the chief was involved Dullea couldn’t prove, but as long as Police Commissioners Theodore Roche, Thomas Shumate, and Frank Foran backed Quinn he was unassailable. The corrupt cops weren’t.

First to take the stand was Captain Thomas Hoertkorn, commander of Southern Station and the man who had ordered, “Let ’em have it, boys,” during the bloody strikes. “I don’t know what my financial position is,” Hoertkorn told DA Matt Brady, who had grown white-haired and bow-backed during the last year. “Go ahead and subpoena my wife. She knows all about the family finances and is the fiscal agent.” Hoertkorn ran one hand through his brushy hair. “Can I go?” He could.

The next night, Mrs. Emma Hoertkorn failed to appear at 8:00 P.M. with her bank books and records of any family financial transactions that might impact her husband’s finances. This put the DA in a dilemma. Because no charges had been brought against Captain Hoertkorn, his wife could not be forced to appear. Within the hour, Emma’s physician, Dr. Emil Torre, sent the court a letter. “Mrs. Hoertkorn collapsed the minute she accepted service of the Grand Jury subpoena to appear at City Hall,” he wrote. “She has had a partial breakdown and is on the verge of hysteria. She has been ill for some time [Emma had been injured in an auto accident on Geary Street the year before] and will be in no condition to testify for at least a week.”

The DA didn’t want to wait a week to get an explanation about the $7,000 her husband had cached in an old bait can for the last fifteen years.

On May 4, he grilled Sergeant Patrick Shannon. “Do you serve under Captain Fred Lemon?” he asked. Lemon, who had replaced honest Captain Art Layne, was the commander of Central Station. “And is it true that you are responsible only to Captain Lemon?”

Shannon refused to answer.

“As a special duty man, did you ever take a gift of money from the keeper of a house of prostitution or a gambling house, or a bootlegger, or any illegal or unlawful enterprise?” Silence for a full minute from Shannon. “Are you prepared to answer?”

“Wait a second, will you. Hold your horses. I want to protect my rights.”

“Well, do you refuse to answer on constitutional grounds?”

“Yes,” said Shannon, “I avail myself of my constitutional rights. My real reason is that I want to get the advice of an attorney.”

The real reason was that Shannon feared
any
answer might incriminate him and lead to criminal prosecution. He was already suspended, but if the charges of gambling, making a false report, and giving false testimony were substantiated he faced summary dismissal. The DA had already connected Shannon with the operation of two bookie joints on his beat and a store that was missing jewelry after he investigated a suspicious fire there.

“Do you realize refusing to answer is an act of contempt?” said the DA.

“Yes, I understand that.”

Over the next half hour Shannon refused to answer whether he would answer. And what about the $25,000 Shannon claimed he had won at Tanforan Race Track and hidden in a woodpile? According to him a mystery bangtail picker named “Monk,” a Gorilla Man of another sort, ran up Shannon’s $2 bet to $25,000. After Turf broker “Cabbage Head” Winchell swore he was Monk’s partner, a photo of a well-dressed monkey in glasses reading a racing form appeared in the
Chronicle
with a cartoon depicting three monkeys wearing police caps captioned, “See no evil,” “Hear no evil,” and “ESPECIALLY speak no evil.”

Patrolman Joseph Brouders, another tightlipped special-duty man under Captain Lemon, took the stand next. The tough ex-Eagles’ Hall bartender had joined the department the same year as Shannon but never risen higher than beat cop. Brouders refused to answer any questions regarding his bank accounts, property holdings, or conduct as an officer. “Do you refuse to answer on a constitutional ground?”

“I refuse to answer whether I refuse to answer on that ground.”

While an officer is entitled to the exercise of his constitutional rights, he is not entitled to keep his job if he refuses to cooperate. “While a man has a constitutional right not to testify against himself,” Justice Holmes wrote, “he has no constitutional right to be a policeman. The refusal to relate facts concerning performance of one’s duties is ground for immediate suspension or dismissal.”

Whereas Shannon had been calm, Brouders was edgy. With a cry, he ran from the court with his hat over his face. Ignoring the elevator, he dashed down four flights where three friends waited outside in a running car. As the reporters caught up, Brouders wheeled and reached for his hip pocket holster. “The first bastard that takes a step toward me—!” he said furiously. He backed onto the auto’s running board and was driven away.

“Ashamed of Something?” the
Chronicle
captioned pictures of Shannon and Brouders with their hats and fingers over their faces.

A few days after the grand jury investigation got under way, Officer Jim Coleman, a twenty-nine-year vet under Captain Lemon, retired suddenly and went fishing. Dullea could find no record of Coleman’s retirement. He knew that an officer with such a long service usually received comment in the press or best wishes from his fellow policemen and superiors. “Mrs. Coleman is lacking in the usual degree of knowledge that a wife would have of her husband’s whereabouts,” said the DA.

Dullea drove to the Coleman’s home. When nobody answered, he peered in. The dog and all the furniture were still there. He went to Fulton Street to question their landlady. She had been sworn to secrecy. “Mrs. Coleman has left town too,” she whispered. “I can only conclude Coleman’s taken a run-out,” Dullea reported to the DA. Now he had to uncover what he could about Coleman’s personal fortune, which was now estimated at $90,000.

“If the police have been bribed by gamblers and prostitutes,” Brunton said, “and members of the SFPD are engaged in a conspiracy to ask and obtain bribes, we want to lay blame where it belongs no matter the cost.”

While the crooked cops had plenty of money, the grand jury didn’t. Although the DA could legally tap his graft fund for money to prepare a grand jury transcript, only $10,000 remained, scarcely half of what was needed. Mayor Rossi would have to be convinced to provide it. There was a certain urgency about the matter. Judge Robinson had uncovered a plot to destroy the only record of grand jury testimony. Every word taken down existed in twelve longhand steno notebooks in the care of T. J. McIlveen, the official stenographer. Under guard, Robinson had the notebooks placed in envelopes, sealed with wax, and locked in two downtown bank vaults until the transcripts could be made.

Supervisor Brown found the mayor at his florist shop, which he had kept throughout his tenure, and asked him to use some of his emergency reserve fund to pay for transcripts. On May 6, the mayor expressed willingness to recommend a further appropriation. “I hardly think the $25,000 already appropriated to delve into police corruption is sufficient,” he said. “Without transcripts any future prosecution of the officers would be fatally handicapped. Besides, there has already been sufficient testimony before the Grand Jury to show that there is more to find out.”

A procession of defiant witnesses and recalcitrant officers marched into the Grand Jury room and marched right out again. The following night Mrs. Emma Hoertkorn, attractive, brown-haired, motherly, and nervous hobbled to the witness stand supported by her son Harold, an accountant, and her lawyer, Chauncey Tramutolo. Harold patted her back as he eased her into the chair, but she hardly needed consoling. She was tough as nails.

“I have some rights!” she snapped at the first question about her husband’s vast array of bank accounts, stocks, and bonds.

“Are you aware that you are committing an act of contempt?” asked the DA.

“I guess I am.”

She was dismissed and limped away. Using other testimony, the DA established Hoertkorn’s fortune as $70,000 ($47,000 in three separate bank accounts and $23,000 in real estate). At 9:20 P.M. Shannon was called into the Grand Jury room where he admitted to four savings accounts: two in the Anglo Bank, one in the American Trust, and one in a Bank of America branch (each of his five children had an account at the Eighth Avenue Bank of America branch). He emerged ten minutes later with sweat on his brow. “They threw me out!” he said. “But I’ve talked too much already.” Then he vanished into the stairwell.

“Thar’s gold in them woodpiles, Pat,” a reporter called after him.

Brouders staggered out next. “Somebody give me a cigarette,” he said. His hands were shaking as he lit up. He sprinted down the stairs so fast he overtook Shannon.

Captain Lemon was still a no-show. The next morning the chief summoned Acting Surgeon D. M. Campbell into his office. “I want you to thoroughly examine Captain Lemon,” he told him, “and see if the arthritis he complains of is really debilitating or even exists. But even if it is shown conclusively that he is physically fit to appear before the Grand Jury, I am still powerless to do anything about it. From my knowledge of the law, I would say that the Grand Jury has the power, if it sees fit, to convene in Lemon’s home. But I am awaiting your report with interest, doctor.”

About the same time, the DA was saying, “I want to see if Lemon is faking,” and sent Dr. Louis Oviedo to examine him and get a second opinion.

Near midnight on Friday, May 1, four uniformed Taraval District officers pulled up in front of Police Commissioner Shumate’s drugstore at 901 Taraval Street, one of a chain of thirty. Two of the officers smashed the glass in the front door, and Officer Sydney Hinson left prints on the glass as he picked out the shards. Three witnesses saw the cops reemerge, stack crates of liquor in their cruiser, and drive away. When assistant manager John Collins arrived at the store at 8:00 A.M., he went directly to a concealed drawer. The hidden money was missing, yet money in plain view in a stamp box by the register was untouched. “Only five people had knowledge of the hiding place,” Collins told Dullea.

Outraged, Dullea personally filed burglary charges against the four patrolmen—John Farrell, radio car Officers Hinson and Thomas Miller, and station keeper John T. McKenna, the only officer not suspended. Yet McKinna had the worst record—fined for intoxication and unofficer-like conduct and twice charged with neglect of duty he once shot the door lock off the Cairo Club. In April 1930 McKinna visited his estranged wife on Leavenworth Street and, when barred from entering, climbed a drainpipe that broke and dropped him two stories into a light well. While still recuperating, he was involved in a hotel room shooting in which a woman wounded herself in the thigh. But after the four cops were formally booked, the chief released them on $250 bail each. “Why are they not in jail,” curious reporters asked. “Is discrimination being shown them because they are officers? Who are the witnesses?”