CAPTAIN HARLAN MCCANN of the Police Department was a bull of a man whose close-cropped, bullet-shaped head sat squarely on a pair of shoulders as wide as a barn door. His brick-red, fleshy face looked as if it had been hewn out of granite. His restless, small eyes were deep-set, and when he was in a rage, which was often, they glared redly, and struck a chill into the toughest mobster or policeman who happened to cross his path.
This night he was out of uniform. He wore a dark brown lounge suit and a slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes. He drove his Lincoln along Lawrence Boulevard, his big hairy hands gripping the wheel as if he had someone hateful to him by the throat.
He swung the car into Pacific Boulevard and drove along the sea front, passing the brilliantly lit hotels, the Casino, the night spots, the neon-plastered Ambassadors’ Club until he reached the far end of the front where the Paradise Club, hidden from casual passers-by by its fifteen-foot walls, overlooked the moonlit ocean.
He swung the car down a narrow lane that ran alongside the east wall and drove for a quarter of a mile, his headlights stabbing the thick darkness that now lay around him. From time to time he glanced in his driving mirror, but he could see no lights of any following car behind him. Ahead of him iron gates suddenly appeared in the glare of his headlights, and he slowed down, reached forward and flicked the lights on and off four times; twice fast, twice slow.
The gates opened and he drove through, pulling up by the guard-house.
A thick-set man wearing a peak cap peered through the window at him, raised his hand in a casual salute and waved him to drive on.
McCann engaged gear and followed the circular road to the club. He pulled up at a side door and got out. Another man in a peak cap slid into the driving scat and drove the car to a nearby garage.
McCann walked up the stone steps to a massive door, rapped four times, twice fast, twice slow, on the bronze knocker, and the door opened.
“Good evening, sir,” a voice said out of the darkness.
McCann grunted and moved forward. He heard the door shut behind him, then lights sprang on. He continued down a long passage without looking back, paused outside another massive door and knocked again, using the same signal.