W E B Griffin - Badge of Honor 03 - The Victim

by The Victim(lit)

  "No," she said, "should it?"

  "No reason it should."

  "Who is he?"

  "A guinea gangster," Matt said.

  "A what?"

  "An Italian-American with alleged ties to organized crime," Matt said dryly.

  "Why are you asking me about him?"

  "Well, he was up there too," Matt said. "On the roof of the garage. Somebody blew the top of his head off with a shotgun."

  "My God!"

  "No great loss to society," Matt said. "He wasn't even a good gangster. Just a cheap thug with ambition. A small-time drug dealer, from what I hear."

  "I think that's about enough of a visit, Matt," Dr. Dotson said. "Penny needs rest. And her parents are on their way."

  Matt touched her arm.

  "I'll bring you a piece of the wedding cake," he said. "Try to behave yourself."

  "I don't have any choice, do I?" she said.

  In the corridor outside, Dr. Dotson laid a hand on Matt's arm.

  "I can't imagine why you told her about that gangster," he said.

  "I thought she'd be interested," Matt said.

  "Thank you very much, Dr. Dotson," Jason Washington said. "I very much appreciate your cooperation."

  ***

  "She's lying," Matt said when Washington got in the pas-senger seat beside him.

  "She is? About what?"

  "About knowing DeZego."

  "Really? What makes you think so?"

  "Jesus, didn't you see her eyes when I called him a 'guinea gangster'?"

  "You're a regular little Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?" Washington asked.

  Matt looked at him, the hurt showing in his eyes.

  "If I did that wrong in there, I'm sorry," he said. "If you didn't think I could handle it, you should have told me what to ask and how to ask it. I did the best I could."

  "As a matter of fact, hotshot," Washington said, "I couldn't have done it any better myself. I would have phrased the questions a little differently, probably, because I don't know the lady as well as you do, but that wasn't at all bad. One of the most difficult calls to make in an interview like that, with a subject like that, is when to let them know you know they're lying. That wasn't the time."

  "I didn't think so, either," Matt said, and then smiled, almost shyly, at Washington.

  "Let's go to the parking garage," Washington said.

  ***

  As they drove around City Hall, Matt said, "I'd like to know for sure if she's taking dope. Do you suppose they took blood when she got to the hospital? That could be tested?''

  "I'm sure they did," Washington said. "But as a matter of law, not to mention ethics, the hospital could not make the results of that test known to the police. It would be considered, in essence, an illegal search or seizure, as well as a violation of the patient's privacy. Her rights against compul-sory incrimination would also be involved."

  "Oh," Matt said.

  "Your friend is a habitual user of cocaine," Washington went on, "using it in quantities that make it probable that she is on the edges of addiction to it."

  Matt looked at him in surprise.

  "One of the most important assets a detective can have, Officer Payne," Washington replied dryly, "is the acquain-tance of a number of people who feel in his debt. Apropos of nothing whatever, I once spoke to a judge prior to his sentencing of a young man for vehicular theft. I told the judge that I thought probation would probably suffice to keep the malefactor on the straight and narrow, and that I was ac-quainted with his mother, a decent, divorced woman who worked as a registered nurse at Hahneman Hospital."

  "Nice," Matt said.

  "I suppose you know the difference between ignorance and stupidity?"

  "I think so." Matt chuckled.

  "A good detective never forgets he's ignorant. He knows very, very little about what's going on. So that means a good detective is always looking for something, or someone, that can reduce the totality of his ignorance."

  "Okay," Matt said with another chuckle. "So where does that leave us, now that we know she's using cocaine and knew DeZego?"

  "I don't have a clue-witticism intended-why either of them got shot," Washington said. "There's a lot of homicide involved with narcotics, but what it usually boils down to is simple armed robbery. Somebody wants either the drugs or the money and uses a gun to take them. The Detweiler girl had nearly seven hundred dollars in her purse; Tony the Zee had a quantity of coke-say five hundred dollars worth, at least. Since they still had the money and the drugs, I think we can reasonably presume that robbery wasn't the basic cause of the shooting."

  They were at the Penn Services Parking Garage. When Matt started to pull onto the entrance ramp, Washington told him to park on the street. Just in time Matt stopped himself from protesting that there was no parking on 15th Street.

  Washington did not enter the building. He walked to the alley at one end, then circled the building as far as he could, until he encountered a chain-link fence. He stood looking at the fence and up at the building for a moment, then he re-traced his steps to the front and walked onto the entrance ramp. Then he walked up the ramp to the first floor.

  Three quarters of the way down the parking area, Matt saw a uniformed cop, and a moment later yellow CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS tape surrounding a Dodge sedan.

  "What's that?" he asked, curiosity overwhelming his sol-emn, silent vow to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut.

  "It was a hit on the NCIC when they ran the plates," Washington said. "Reported stolen in Drexel Hill."

  The National Crime Information Center was an FBI-run computer system. Detectives (at one time there had been six-teen Homicide detectives in the Penn Services garage) had fed the computer the license numbers of every car in the garage at the time of the shooting. NCIC had returned every bit of information it had on any of them. The Dodge had been entered into the computer as stolen.

  "Good morning," Washington said to the uniformed cop. "The lab get to this yet?"

  "They were here real early this morning," the cop said. "I think there's still a couple of them upstairs."

  Washington nodded. He walked around the car and then looked into the front and backseats. Then he started up the ramp to the upper floors.

  "It'll probably turn out the Dodge has nothing to do with the shooting," he said to Matt. "But we'll check it out, just to be sure."

  The ramp to the roof was blocked by another uniformed cop and a cross of crime-scene tape, but when Matt and Washington walked on it, Matt saw there was only a Police Lab truck and three cars-a Mercedes convertible, roof up; a blue-and-white; and an unmarked car-on the whole floor.

  He could see a body form outlined in white, where Penny Detweiler had been when he had driven on the roof and where he had found the body of Anthony J. DeZego. It seemed pretty clear that the Mercedes was Penny's car.

  But where was DeZego's ?

  A hollow-eyed man came out of the unmarked car, smiled at Washington, and offered his hand.

  "You are your usually natty self this morning, Jason, I see," he said.

  "Is that a touch of jealousy I detect, Lieutenant?" Wash-ington replied. "You know Matt Payne? Matt, this is Lieu-tenant Jack Potter, the mad genius of Forensics."

  "No. But what do they say? 'He is preceded by his reputation'? How are you, Payne?"

  "How do you do, sir?"

  "Anything?" Washington asked.

  "Not much. We picked up some shotshell pellets and two wads, either from off the floor or picked out of the concrete. No more shell casings. Which means that the shooter knew what he was doing; or that he had only two shells, which suggests it was double-barrel, as opposed to an autoloader; or all of the above."

  "Anything in the girl's car?"

  "Uh-uh. No bags of anything," Lieutenant Potter replied. "Haven't had a chance either to run the prints or analyze what the vacuum cleaner picked up."

  "I'd love to find a clear print of Mr. DeZego inside the Mercedes," Washington sai
d.

  "If there's a match, you'll be the first to know," Potter said.

  "Can you release the Mercedes?" Washington asked. Pot-ter's eyebrows rose in question. "I thought it might be a nice gesture on our part if Officer Payne and I returned the car to the Detweiler home."

  "Why not?" Potter replied. "What about the Dodge? There was nothing out of the ordinary there."

  "You've got the name and address of the owner?"

  Potter nodded.

  "Let me have it. I'll have someone check him out. I think we can take the tape down, anyway.''

  Potter grunted.

  "Which raises the question, of course, of Mr. DeZego's car," Washington said. "Do you suppose he walked up here?"

  "Or he came up here with the shooter and they left without him," Potter said.

  "Or his car is parked on the street," Washington said. "Or was parked on the street and may be in the impound yard now.''

  "I'll check on that for you, if you like," Potter said.

  "Matt," Washington said, "find a phone. Call Organized Crime and see if they know what kind of a car Anthony J. DeZego drove. Then call Traffic and see if they impounded a car like that and, if so, where they impounded it. Maybe we'll get lucky."

  "Right," Matt replied.

  "And if that doesn't work, call Police Radio and have them see if they can locate the car and get back to me, if they can."

  "Right," Matt said.

  Washington turned to Potter.

  "You have any idea where the shooter was standing?"

  "Let me show you," Potter said as Matt walked to the telephone.

  TEN

  Mrs. Charles McFadden, Sr., a plump, gray-haired woman of forty-five, was watching television in the living room of her home, a row house on Fitzgerald Street not far from Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia when the telephone rang.

  Not without effort, and sighing, she pushed herself out of the upholstered chair and went to the telephone, which had been installed on a small shelf mounted on the wall in the corridor leading from the front door past the stairs to the kitchen.

  "Hello?"

  "Can I reach Officer McFadden on this number?" a male voice inquired.

  "You can," she said. "But he's got his own phone. Did you try that?"

  "Yes, ma'am. There was no answer."

  Come to think of it, Agnes McFadden thought, I didn't 't hear it ring.

  "Just a minute," she said, and then: "Who did you say is calling?"

  "This is Sergeant Henderson, ma'am, of the Highway Pa-trol. Is this Mrs. McFadden?"

  "Senior," she said. "I'm his mother."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I'll get him," she said. "Just a moment."

  She put the handset carefully beside the base and then went upstairs. Charley's room was at the rear. When he had first gone on the job-working Narcotics undercover, which had pleased his mother not at all, the way he went around looking like a bum and working all hours at night-he had had his own telephone line installed.

  Then, as happy as a kid with a new toy train, he had found a little black box in Radio Shack that permitted the switching on and off of the telephone ringer. It was a great idea, but what happened was that after he turned off the ringer, he forgot to turn it back on, which meant that either he didn't get calls at all, or the caller, as now, had the number of the phone downstairs, and she or his father had to climb the stairs and tell him he had a call.

  She knocked at his door and, when there was no answer, pushed it open. Charley was lying facedown on the bed in his Jockey shorts, his arms and legs spread, snoring softly. That told her that he'd stopped off for a couple (to judge by the sour smell, a whole hell of a lot more than a couple) of beers when he got off work last night.

  She called his name and touched his shoulder. Then she put both hands on his shoulders and bounced him up and down. He slept like the dead. Always had.

  Finally he half turned and raised his head.

  "What the hell, Ma!" Charley said.

  "Don't you swear at me!"

  "What do you want, Ma?"

  "There's some sergeant on the phone."

  Still half asleep, Charley found his telephone, picked it up, heard the dial tone, and looked at her in confusion.

  "Downstairs," she said. "You and your telephone switch!"

  He got out of bed with surprising alacrity and ran down the corridor. She heard the thumping and creaking of the stairs as he took them two at a time.

  "McFadden," he said to the telephone.

  "Sergeant Henderson, out at Bustleton and Bowler."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You heard about Officer Magnella being shot last night?"

  "Yeah."

  "We're trying to put as many men on it as we can. Any reason you can't do some overtime? Specifically, any reason you can't come in at noon instead of four?"

  "I'll be there."

  Sergeant Henderson hung up.

  Charley had two immediate thoughts as he put the phone in its cradle: Jesus, what time is it? and, an instant later, Jesus, I feel like death warmed over. I've got to start cutting it short at the FOP.

  "What was that all about?" his mother asked from the foot of the stairs, and then, without waiting for a reply, "Put some clothes on. This isn't a nudist colony."

  "I gotta go to work. You hear about the cop who got shot?"

  "It was on the TV. What's that got to do with you?"

  "They're still trying to catch who did it."

  Mrs. Agnes McFadden had been the only person in the neighborhood who had not been thrilled when her son had been called a police hero for his role in putting the killer of Captain Dutch Moffitt of the Highway Patrol out of circula-tion. She reasoned that if Gerald Vincent Gallagher was in-deed a murderer, then obviously he could have done harm to her only son.

  "I thought you were in training to be a Highway Patrol-man. ''

  Charley McFadden had done nothing to correct his moth-er's misperception that Highway Patrol was primarily charged with removing speeding and/or drunk drivers from the streets.

  "I am," he said. "It's overtime. I gotta go."

  "I'll make you something to eat," she said.

  "No time, Ma. Thanks, anyway."

  "You have to eat."

  "I'll get something after I report in."

  He went up the stairs and to his bedroom and found his watch. It was quarter to ten. He had declined breakfast because he knew it would be accompanied by comments about his drinking, his late hours, and probably, since she had heard about Magnella getting himself shot, by reopening the subject of his being a cop at all.

  But since he had announced he had to leave right away, he would have to leave right away, and even if he took his time getting something to eat and going by the dry cleaners to drop off and pick up a uniform, he still would have an hour or more to kill before he could sign in.

  He took his time taking a shower, steeling himself several times for the shock turning off the hot water would mean, hoping that the cold would clear his mind, and then he shaved with care.

  He didn't need a haircut, although getting one would have killed some time.

  Fuck it, he decided finally. I'll just go get something to eat and go out to Bustleton and Bowler and just hang around until noon.

  His mother was standing by the door when he came down the stairs, demanding her ritual kiss and delivering her ritual order for him to be careful.

  He noticed two things when he got to the street: first, that the right front wheel of his Volkswagen was on the curb, which confirmed he had had a couple of beers more than he probably should have had at the FOP; and, second, that the redhead with the cute little ass he had noticed several times around the neighborhood was coming out of the McCarthys', across the street and two houses down.

  He smiled at her shyly and, when she smiled back, equally shyly, gave her a little wave. She didn't wave back. Just smiled. But that was a step in the right direction, he decided. Tomorrow morning he would as
k around and see who she was. He could not ask his mother. She would know, of course; she knew when anybody in the neighborhood burped, but if he asked her about the girl, the next thing he knew, she would be trying to pair him off with her.

  Charley knew that his mother devoutly believed that what he needed in his life was a nice, decent Catholic girl. If the redhead with the cute little ass had anything to do with the McCarthys, she met that definition. Mrs. McCarthy was a Mass-every-morning Catholic, and Mr. McCarthy was a big deal in the Knights of Columbus.