Court was the biggest sundial in the world, where local ladies conducted needlework parties. Five curving roads intersected the track, and just on the other side of Ocean Avenue, they became Fairfield, Lakewood, Manor, and Pinehurst drives. Dullea crossed Ocean to Lakewood, where Josie lived.
Josie’s two-story stucco stood at the end of a line of similar whitewashed Spanish Colonials crawling up and over a steep hill. Most Ingleside Terraces homes had been designed in the Arts and Crafts or Mediterranean style. The developer, Joseph Leonard, had made “crowded conditions impossible” by offering oversize lots, ranging from fifty to eighty feet in width and from one to two hundred feet in depth from four different plans. Josie’s small two-bedroom had cost her $6,000.
Dullea secreted himself uphill where he could see Josie’s front door and peer down on her mission-tiled roof. Her dark-trimmed bay windows overlooked the street. A small garage, virtually soundproof, lay below the master bedroom where a basement ordinarily would be. The garage was locked and empty. Josie did not drive and never allowed anyone the use of her garage.
Around 8:00 P.M. a tall, lean figure came puffing uphill from the direction of Urbano Drive and mounted the ten brick steps to Josie’s door. A quick sharp buzz. When Josie opened the door, Dullea saw Frank Egan framed in the light. As the door closed, Dullea rushed down the drop of the hill but checked himself in mid-street. “Egan wouldn’t act without an ironclad alibi,” he thought. “Mrs. Hughes could not be safer than when Egan is in the house with her.” An hour later Egan came down the steps and Dullea phoned Josie. When she answered, he hung up. Afterward, Josie’s neighbors complained her phone rang far into the late hours.
Over the next week Dullea monitored the Dictograph. “From time to time,” he said, “we heard Egan refer again to the project of murdering Mrs. Hughes, and almost as frequently I phoned and attempted to convince her that she should have nothing more to do with him.”
Dullea overheard Egan planning to become “the Czar of San Francisco” by murdering any political foes in his path to the mayor’s seat. He even targeted his ineffectual assistant, Gerald Kenny, a man who could absorb a martini at fifty paces. But there was no more talk of killing Josie. Dullea concluded he was aware his plan was blown. As Egan’s ranting grew more incoherent, Dullea decided he was either drunk or using dope or his mind was failing. If he was not in his right mind, there was no reason to take his threats more seriously than those of any hophead.
More months passed. Dullea disconnected the bug, but consulted with his lawyer, Vince Hallinan, who assured him there was no longer any danger. On March 7, the bank, as forecast, filed a foreclosure suit on Egan’s house. Whatever the desperate public defender was going to do he was going to do it soon.
Anguished by indecision, Dullea decided to see Chief Quinn. Two years before, Quinn, a favorite of the mayor and police commissioners, had rocketed from sergeant to chief of police. His first official act as chief had been to lock Mrs. Frances Orlando in the Bush Street Jail for the crime of dressing in men’s clothes. Quinn’s promise of a clean department had been welcome words to Dullea. During the Rum Bribery Investigations in April 1922, police officers, deputy sheriffs, and their higher-ups had been arrested in every district. Police Commissioner Theodore Roche had begun cleaning house with the arrest of knife-wielding ex-cop Tom Joyce, the proprietor of a blind pig at 47 Sixth Street. “Cops accepting bribes from saloon keepers in return for immunity from arrest,” Roche said, “will be prosecuted on charges of conspiracy to violate the Volstead Act [which outlawed alcohol]. Policemen accepting money from bootleggers will be weeded out. I have no use for a crook inside or outside the department.”
Had
Josie’s two-story stucco stood at the end of a line of similar whitewashed Spanish Colonials crawling up and over a steep hill. Most Ingleside Terraces homes had been designed in the Arts and Crafts or Mediterranean style. The developer, Joseph Leonard, had made “crowded conditions impossible” by offering oversize lots, ranging from fifty to eighty feet in width and from one to two hundred feet in depth from four different plans. Josie’s small two-bedroom had cost her $6,000.
Dullea secreted himself uphill where he could see Josie’s front door and peer down on her mission-tiled roof. Her dark-trimmed bay windows overlooked the street. A small garage, virtually soundproof, lay below the master bedroom where a basement ordinarily would be. The garage was locked and empty. Josie did not drive and never allowed anyone the use of her garage.
Around 8:00 P.M. a tall, lean figure came puffing uphill from the direction of Urbano Drive and mounted the ten brick steps to Josie’s door. A quick sharp buzz. When Josie opened the door, Dullea saw Frank Egan framed in the light. As the door closed, Dullea rushed down the drop of the hill but checked himself in mid-street. “Egan wouldn’t act without an ironclad alibi,” he thought. “Mrs. Hughes could not be safer than when Egan is in the house with her.” An hour later Egan came down the steps and Dullea phoned Josie. When she answered, he hung up. Afterward, Josie’s neighbors complained her phone rang far into the late hours.
Over the next week Dullea monitored the Dictograph. “From time to time,” he said, “we heard Egan refer again to the project of murdering Mrs. Hughes, and almost as frequently I phoned and attempted to convince her that she should have nothing more to do with him.”
Dullea overheard Egan planning to become “the Czar of San Francisco” by murdering any political foes in his path to the mayor’s seat. He even targeted his ineffectual assistant, Gerald Kenny, a man who could absorb a martini at fifty paces. But there was no more talk of killing Josie. Dullea concluded he was aware his plan was blown. As Egan’s ranting grew more incoherent, Dullea decided he was either drunk or using dope or his mind was failing. If he was not in his right mind, there was no reason to take his threats more seriously than those of any hophead.
More months passed. Dullea disconnected the bug, but consulted with his lawyer, Vince Hallinan, who assured him there was no longer any danger. On March 7, the bank, as forecast, filed a foreclosure suit on Egan’s house. Whatever the desperate public defender was going to do he was going to do it soon.
Anguished by indecision, Dullea decided to see Chief Quinn. Two years before, Quinn, a favorite of the mayor and police commissioners, had rocketed from sergeant to chief of police. His first official act as chief had been to lock Mrs. Frances Orlando in the Bush Street Jail for the crime of dressing in men’s clothes. Quinn’s promise of a clean department had been welcome words to Dullea. During the Rum Bribery Investigations in April 1922, police officers, deputy sheriffs, and their higher-ups had been arrested in every district. Police Commissioner Theodore Roche had begun cleaning house with the arrest of knife-wielding ex-cop Tom Joyce, the proprietor of a blind pig at 47 Sixth Street. “Cops accepting bribes from saloon keepers in return for immunity from arrest,” Roche said, “will be prosecuted on charges of conspiracy to violate the Volstead Act [which outlawed alcohol]. Policemen accepting money from bootleggers will be weeded out. I have no use for a crook inside or outside the department.”
Had
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