Читать книгу A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia - Tanya Chalupa - Страница 9

CHAPTER 2

Water in the Safes

When Pendleton and Ribar finished their account of the events, Palmini told Rudimenkin and the reporting officer that he wanted to retrace the wetsuits’ steps inside the restaurant. Rudimenkin and the other officer followed him close enough to observe as Palmini followed the crime scene trail.

First, Palmini noted the door’s proximity to the restroom, where Ribar and Pendleton were held handcuffed. It explained why the Trident workers heard everything so clearly. Bending down for a closer look, he touched the jagged edge of a small opening the wetsuits made in the lower part of a door marked “Private.”

“Man, these guys thought of everything. Look.” Palmini pointed to the lower half of the door. The upper half was still intact, its alarm system undisturbed. “They even drilled small circles here to make it easier to hack through the door.”

Rudimenkin bent down to take a closer look at the spot Palmini was pointing to.

“See, one hole is still intact,” Palmini said.

At first, Palmini was puzzled as to why the wetsuits went to so much trouble to break through a door that led to nothing but a storage closet lined with shelves piled with napkins, ashtrays and other miscellaneous supplies, until he stepped inside and saw that the wetsuits also knocked down a section of the closet wall connected to the main office. Bending down, he squeezed through the opening. When he rose up again, he was standing in the main office behind a desk. Rudimenkin poked his head through the large tear in the wall, then he and the other officer went around and entered the room through the regular door, meeting up with Palmini on the other side.

In the main office, they found that the wetsuits had chopped down another section of a wall on the north side of the room and crawled through the opening in the plasterboard into what appeared to be yet another closet. This was a tiny office. And it was here that the Trident’s two treasure chests were housed: the Mosler and Hermann safes.

The two safes were top of the line. Both companies had been in existence since the late nineteenth century. The Hermann Company was founded in San Francisco and Mosler in Cincinnati. Mosler vaults were so strong that the ones set up in Mitsui Bank in Hiroshima prior to World War II survived the nuclear explosion.

The wetsuits focused the torch on the Hermann. Palmini figured they’d spent the bulk of their time here. As it turned out, the Hermann safe held the “juicier” contents, but they also peeled open the Mosler safe, removing the outer skin of the safe to get to the weekend receipts.

Palmini thought the wetsuits’ scheme was brilliant. They drilled and chopped their way to the two safes without setting off the alarm. It was as if they knew the layout of the restaurant by heart, or else someone on the inside provided them with a detailed blueprint.

“Wow.” Palmini stared down deep into the hole of the Hermann Safe. It was filled with water. He had never seen anything like it. Why water? he wondered.

Later in the day, Palmini telephoned a manager at the Hermann Safe Company, who explained to the detective that it would take burglars about an hour of burning time to melt one-and-one-half inch of steel. Because of the small area in which the wetsuits worked, he figured they used small tanks of acetylene and oxygen rather than the larger tanks. Based on what Palmini told him, he concluded that the people responsible for the break-in at the Trident had “very good know-how” and were “very skilled.”

As Palmini discovered later that day, there were many methods used to force open safes. The wetsuits’ method eliminated amateurs. The oxygen-acetylene cutting torch produced intense heat when applied to the steel, causing it to literally melt and be carried away with a stream of oxygen. The operator had to be adept at controlling the proper levels of oxygen and acetylene to keep it from exploding in his face. The safecrackers poured water into the safe while using the torch to saturate the stacks of paper bills and keep them from igniting from the falling particles of hot steel. Some of the paper money or documents would inadvertently get burned when the initial hole was drilled, but every effort was made to dampen the contents inside the safe as soon as possible to minimize the damage.

Palmini also discovered much later in his investigation that there was a lot more taken at the Trident than had been reported to the police: drugs, jewelry and an additional $50,000 in cash. The Trident wasn’t hit only for its weekend receipts. The large sum of money stored in the Hermann safe was for a drug deal that was to take place the following day. Inside the safe, the wetsuits found plastic bags filled with white powder. One of them confiscated it for himself.¹

After Palmini and Rudimenkin finished retracing the crime scene at the Trident, they stepped outside into the cool, salty air and strolled toward Rudimenkin’s patrol vehicle. The sergeant’s work at the Trident was done and, while the other officer remained inside the restaurant with the employee witnesses to finish up the paperwork, Rudimenkin was ready to head back to the station. Palmini’s uncompleted work forced him to remain.

“You’re absolutely right, George.” Palmini shrugged as he and Rudimenkin walked to the sergeant’s black and white. “This is a safe burglary.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rudimenkin slowed his pace and turned his head toward the detective.

“Now, George,” Palmini shrugged. “What do you want me to do about this?” He paused, facing Rudimenkin. “What do I know about safe burglaries?”

Bursting into a wide grin, Rudimenkin stopped in his tracks. He turned to face Palmini, chuckling and shaking his head in amusement. Palmini looked at his old buddy and knew his friend was back. He realized Rudimenkin had been as uneasy about the whole business with the Trident as he was.

“Well, Bill, here’s your chance to become a star—Sausalito’s own Columbo,” Rudimenkin grinned, referring to Peter Falk, the actor who starred in a hit television series about a detective in a crumpled raincoat.

“Right on. Just call me the mailman. I always deliver.” Palmini grinned with confidence. But inside he did not feel so sure of himself. Nor did he know how prophetic Rudimenkin’s words would turn out to be. It was not many months later that, rain or shine, he found a need to wear his trenchcoat daily and the staff and lawyers at the Marin Courthouse, which he frequented as he worked on his cases, actually nicknamed him “Columbo.” But at that moment, Rudimenkin did not know he was making a prediction, nor was he buying into Palmini’s optimism.

“Yeah, right, man. These guys are pros. I’m talking organized crime here. Do you understand, Billy Boy? It’s organized crime.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m still the mailman.” Palmini kept up his act.

Rudimenkin shook his head and pulled out his pipe. As he filled it, Palmini took the moment to barrage him with questions that were bothering him. The fact that Pendleton heard a static-filled walkie-talkie and Ribar heard a clear sound coming from the transmitter could be explained. Maybe the wetsuits communicated with two separate individuals at opposite ends of the restaurant and there were two antennas. Maybe they had the place covered from the street and the bay. But who were these guys? Were they the same ones who broke into Ricco’s? How did they get here? Did they come over in a boat like pirates in the night?

Palmini and Rudimenkin decided to turn back and walk to the pier behind the Trident. Trying to make sense of the wet feet, Palmini pointed out to Rudimenkin that maybe the wetsuits came by boat and when they were climbing the ladder by the loading dock to get to the top of the pier, they slipped, or maybe, he reasoned, it had something to do with high tide. The explanations were weak and didn’t really account for the red calves and ankles, and Palmini knew it. But that was all he could muster up at the time.

Rudimenkin could not come up with anything better either, so Palmini walked him back to his patrol car. Something would turn up, they reassured each other.

After Rudimenkin left, Palmini went back inside the Trident, which shared the building with another restaurant on the floor above it named Ondine. The structure housing the two restaurants was built by the San Francisco Yacht Club in 1898. Over the decades, the two restaurants had become popular celebrity destinations. But Ondine was the more subdued of the two. And when the wetsuits made their mark on the Trident, Ondine was closed for the night. There was no one there to see or hear anything.

The Trident’s main entrance faced west. There were also a number of doors on the side of the restaurant. On that particular day, the armed burglars could have used any of these entrances, since all the doors were unlocked. After jotting down additional notes on his observations for his own police report, Palmini telephoned the department to send the evidence officer over to take photos of the crime scene. He then turned his attention back to Ribar and Pendleton, who were still hanging around. After going over their statements and asking them a few more questions, he dismissed them, but not before informing the two men that he would be contacting them again. He was particularly hopeful that Pendleton might be able to identify one of the assailants. The only problem was that Palmini did not know where to look for the man in order for Pendleton to identify him. It was the case of the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Shortly after Ribar and Pendleton left, the evidence officer arrived to shoot crime scene photos. It was time for Palmini to confront the tedious aspects of detective work—at least in this particular situation—looking for clues. He gathered pieces of loose burnt metal, scraped residue samples off walls and the area around the safes and then meticulously zipped each item into a separate plastic bag for analysis and comparison. He also included the handcuffs and kitchen towels used on Pendleton and Ribar as part of the evidence, should the case go to trial. Palmini wondered if the case ever was going to go to trial. He did not have much faith that it would.

After a while, he had enough information from the Trident and decided to head out. Getting back behind the wheel of his car, he drove down to the Sausalito Police Department, housed in a two-story red brick building with a flat roof, about a quarter of a mile from the burglarized restaurant.

Those guys pulled it off practically right under our noses, he thought, as he parked his car on the street next to the station. He was angry. Mostly he was annoyed at himself for feeling helpless and for being no match for such bravado. He recalled his comment to Rudimenkin, when he said, “What do I know about safecracking?” Indeed. It was time to call in help.

One of the first things Palmini did when he got inside the station and settled into his office was to send out a teletype to all California law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice and FBI district offices, asking for assistance and information. The hunt that would eventually lead the young detective to the ring of safecrackers known in the underworld as “The Best in the West” was on its way.