At ten o’clock the following morning, Jack Maurer, accompanied by his attorney, Abe Gollowitz, and four hard-faced, alert bodyguards, arrived in a blue and silver Cadillac outside the City Hall.
A half an hour previously every newspaper in town had been tipped off that Maurer was on his way to surrender to the District Attorney. There was a big crowd of newspaper men, camera men, television cameras and three movie cameras to greet him.
Maurer got out of the car, a broad smile on his swarthy face, and waved towards the television camera. Maurer was a television fan, and he liked the thought that his face was being watched at this very moment by three-quarters of a million people.
The reporters converged on him, but his four bodyguards formed a protective wall around him and waved them aside.
“Have a little patience, boys,” Maurer said from behind his screen. “I’ll have something to say to you when I come out. Just stick around until I’ve had a talk with the D.A.”
“What makes you think you’re coming out?” one of the reporters bawled, his face red with anger.”
Maurer gave him a wide friendly smile, and still surrounded by his bodyguards, he mounted the steps to the entrance of the City Hall and disappeared through its portals.
“The fat sonofabitch,” the reporter said. “He won’t talk himself out of this rap. They’ve got him where it’ll hurt most.”
“Yeah?” the Pacific Herald reporter sneered. “Do you imagine a bastard like Maurer would surrender unless he knew he could beat the rap? I bet you ten dollars to a dime he comes out of there in ten minutes as free as the air.”
“You’ve got yourself a bet, son,” the other reporter said pityingly. “I happen to know what Forest has got on him.”