The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  He had mixed emotions about what he was doing now. Bad guys are supposed to be bad guys, not fellow cops, not guys you knew for a fact were-or at least had been-good cops.

  On one hand, now that he had been forced to think about it, he was and always had been a straight arrow. And just about all of his friends were straight arrows. He personally had never taken a dime. Even when he was fresh out of the Academy, walking a beat in the Twenty-third District, he had been made uncomfortable when merchants had given him hams and turkeys and whiskey at Christmas.

  Taking a ham or a turkey or a bottle of booze at Christmas wasn’t really being on the take, but even then, when he was walking a beat, he had drawn the line at taking cash, refusing with a smile the offer of a folded twenty-dollar bill or an envelope with money in it.

  There was something wrong, he thought, in a cop taking money for doing his job.

  What these sleazeballs were doing was taking money, big-time money, for not doing their jobs. Worse, for doing crap behind their badges they knew goddamned well was dirty.

  That was one side-they were dirty, and they deserved whatever was going to happen to them.

  The other side was, they were cops, brother officers, and doing what he was doing made him uncomfortable.

  When Tony had been on the sauce, brother officers had turned him loose a half-dozen times when they would have locked up a civilian for drunken driving, or belting some guy in a bar and making a general asshole of himself.

  It wasn’t, in other words, like he was Mr. Pure himself.

  Washington, Sergeant Jason Washington, his longtime partner in Homicide, and now his supervisor, was Mr. Pure. And so was Inspector Wohl, who was running this job. About the only thing they had ever taken because they were wearing a badge was the professional courtesy they got from a brother officer who stopped them for speeding.

  And the kids he was supervising now were pure too. Payne would never take money because he didn’t have to, he was rich, and Lewis was pure because he’d got that from his father. Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was so pure and such a straight arrow that they made jokes about it; said that he would turn himself in if he got a goober stuck in his throat and had to spit on the sidewalk.

  Tony knew that what he was doing was right, and that it had to be done. He just wished somebody else was doing it.

  He entered the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel by the side entrance on Walnut Street, into the cocktail lounge. He stood just inside the door long enough to check for a familiar face at the bar, and then, after walking through it, checked the lobby before walking quickly across to the bank of elevators. He told the operator to take him to twelve.

  He tried the key he had to 1204, but it was latched-as it should have been-from inside, and he had to wait until Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., who was an enormous black kid, six three, two hundred twenty, two hundred thirty even, came to it and peered through the cracked door and then closed it to take the latch off and let him in.

  When he opened the door, Lewis was walking quickly across the room to the window, a set of earphones on his head still connected by a long coiled cord to one of the two reel-to-reel tape recorders set up on the chest of drawers.

  “What’s going on, Tiny?” Harris asked, and then before Lewis could reply, “Where’s Payne?”

  Tiny replied by pointing, out the window and up.

  Harris crossed the room, noticing as he did a room-service cart with a silver pot of coffee and what looked like the leftovers from a room-service steak dinner.

  Payne, of course. It wouldn’t occur to him to take a quick trip to McDonald’s or some other fast-food joint and bring a couple of hamburgers and some paper cups full of coffee to the room. He’s in a hotel room, call room service and order up a couple of steaks, medium rare. Fuck what it costs.

  Detective Tony Harris looked out the window and saw Detective Matthew M. Payne.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed. “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?”

  “The lady opened the window,” Officer Lewis replied, “which dislodged the suction cup.”

  “Did she see the wire?” Harris wondered out loud, and was immediately sorry he had.

  Dumb question. If she had seen the wire, Payne would not be standing on a twelve-inch ledge thirteen floors up, trying to put the suction cup back on the window.

  “I don’t think so,” Tiny said.

  “Did we get anything?”

  “If we had a movie camera instead of just a microphone, we would have a really blue movie,” Tiny Lewis said.

  “Is he crazy or what, to try that?”

  “I told him he was. He said he could do it.”

  “How did he get out there?”

  “There have been no lights in Twelve Sixteen all night. Two doors down from Twelve Eighteen. He said he thought he could get in.”

  “You mean pick the lock?” Harris asked, and again without giving Officer Lewis a chance to reply, went on. “What if someone had seen him in the corridor?”

  “For one thing, from what was coming over the wire before the lady knocked the mike off, we didn’t think the Lieutenant was quite ready to go home to his wife and kiddies, and for another, Matt’s wearing a hotel-maintenance uniform, and says he doesn’t think the Lieutenant knows him anyway.”

  “Yeah, but what if he had?”

  “He’s got it!” Lewis said.

  He took the earphones from his head and held them out to Tony Harris.

  Harris took them and put them on.

  The sounds of sexual activity made Harris uncomfortable.

  “I’ve been wondering if the fact that I find some of that rather exciting makes me a pervert,” Tiny said.

  “We’re trying to catch him with one of the mobsters, not with his cock in some hooker’s mouth.”

  “Unfortunately, at the moment, all we have is him and the lady. Maybe Martinez and Whatsisname will get lucky when they relieve us,” Tiny said, and then added: “He’s back inside. I agree with you, that was crazy.”

  “Your pal is crazy,” Harris said.

  “I think he prefers to think of it as devotion to duty,” Tiny said. “You know, ‘Neither heat, nor rain, nor thirteen stories off the ground will deter this courier…’”

  “Oh, shit,” Harris said, chuckling. “I’d never try something like that.”

  “Neither would I. But I don’t want to be Police Commissioner before I’m forty.”

  Harris looked at him and smiled.

  “You think that’s what he wants? Really?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s just playing cop…”

  Harris snorted.

  “Other times, I think he takes the job as seriously as my old man. You know, the thin blue line, protecting the citizens from the savages. We know he’s not doing it for the money.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “What did he do? Run back?” Harris asked.

  “Hay-zus, more likely,” Tiny said, and went to the door.

  It was in fact Detective Jesus Martinez, a small-barely above departmental minimums for height and weight-olive-skinned man with a penchant for gold jewelry and sharply tailored suits from Krass Brothers.

  “What’s up?” he said by way of greeting.

  “X-rated audiotapes,” Tiny said.

  “And your buddy’s been playing Supercop.”

  There was no love lost between Detectives Payne and Martinez, and Tony Harris knew it.

  “Where is he?”

  “The last we saw him, he was on a ledge outside the love-nest,” Tony said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting the mike back. The hooker opened the window and knocked the suction cup off.”

  Martinez went to the window and looked out.

  “No shit? Is it working now?”

  “Yeah. The Lieutenant’s having a really good time,” Tiny said, offering Martinez the headset.

  Martinez took the headset and held one of the phones to his ea
r. He listened for nearly a minute, then handed it back.

  “Payne really went out on that ledge to put it back?”

  “‘Neither heat nor rain…’” Tiny began to recite, stopping when there was another knock at the door.

  Martinez opened it.

  Detective Matthew M. Payne stood there. He was a tall, lithe twenty-five-year-old with dark, thick hair and intelligent eyes, wearing the gray cotton shirt and trousers work uniform of the hotel-maintenance staff.

  “What do you say, Hay-zus?” Payne said. “Strangely enough, I’m delighted to see you.”

  Martinez didn’t respond.

  “Is it working?” Payne asked Tiny Lewis. Lewis nodded.

  “Tony, now that Detective Martinez is here,” Payne said, “and the goddamned microphone is back where it’s supposed to be, can I take off?”

  Harris did not respond directly. He looked at Tiny Lewis.

  “Anything on what you have so far?”

  “You mean in addition to the grunts, wheezes, and other sighs of passion? No. No names were mentioned, and the subject of money never came up.”

  “Washington will want to hear them anyway,” Harris said, and turned to Payne. “You take the tapes to Washington, and you can take off. Let Martinez know where you are.”

  “OK, it’s a deal.”

  “Going out on that ledge was dumb,” Harris said.

  “The Lieutenant’s inamorata knocked the microphone off,” Payne replied. “No ledge, no tape.”

  “The Lieutenant’s what?” Tiny asked.

  “I believe the word is defined as ‘doxy, paramour, lover,’” Payne said.

  “In other words, ‘hooker’?”

  “A hooker, by definition, does it for money,” Payne said. “We can’t even bust this one for that. No money has changed hands. The last I heard, accepting free samples of available merchandise is not against the law. When you think about it, for all we know, it was true love at first sight between the Lieutenant and the inamorata.”

  Harris laughed.

  “Get out of here, Payne,” Harris said. “You want to take off, Tiny, I’ll stick around until the other guy-what the hell is his name? — gets here.”

  “Pederson,” Martinez furnished. “Pederson with a d.”

  “I’ll wait. I find this all fascinating.”

  “You’re a dirty young man, Tiny,” Payne said. “I’m off.”

  FOUR

  At just about the same time-9:35 P.M. -Detective Matthew M. Payne left the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel by the rear service entrance and walked quickly, almost trotted, up Walnut Street toward his apartment on Rittenhouse Square, Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley walked, almost swaggered, into the Reading Terminal Market four blocks away at Twelfth and Market streets.

  Mr. Foley was also twenty-five years of age, but at six feet one inch tall and 189 pounds, was perceptibly larger than Detective Payne. Mr. Foley was wearing a two-toned jacket (reddish plaid body, dark blue sleeves and collar) and a blue sports shirt with the collar open and neatly arranged over the collar of his jacket.

  Mr. Foley walked purposefully through the Market, appreciatively sniffing the smells from the various food counters, until he reached the counter of Max’s Cheese Steaks. Waiting for him there, sitting on a high, backless stool, facing a draft beer, a plate of french-fried potatoes, and one of Max’s almost-famous cheese steak sandwiches, was Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison, who was forty-two, five feet eight inches tall, and weighed 187 pounds.

  Mr. Atchison, who thought of himself as a businessman and restaurateur-he owned and operated the Inferno Lounge in the 1900 block of Market Street-and believed that appearances were important, was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit, a crisp white shirt, a finely figured silk necktie, and well-polished black wing-tip shoes.

  Both gentlemen were armed, Mr. Atchison with a Colt Cobra. 38 Special caliber revolver, carried in a belt holster, and Mr. Foley with a. 45 ACP caliber Colt Model 1911A1 semiautomatic pistol that he carried in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. Mr. Atchison was legally armed, having obtained from the Sheriff of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he maintained his home, a license to carry a concealed weapon for the purpose of personal protection.

  Mr. Atchison had told the Chief of Police that he often left his place of business late at night carrying large sums of cash and was concerned with the possibility of being robbed. The Chief of Police knew that the 1900 block of Market Street was an unsavory neighborhood and that Mr. Atchison was not only a law-abiding citizen, but a captain in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, in which he was himself an officer, and granted the license to carry.

  It is extremely difficult in Philadelphia for any private citizen to get a license to carry a concealed weapon, but Philadelphia honors concealed-weapons permits issued by other police jurisdictions. Mr. Atchison, therefore, was in violation of no law for having his pistol.

  Mr. Foley, on the other hand, did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon. He had applied for one, with the notion that all the cops could say was “no,” in which case he would be no worse off than he already was. And for a while, it looked as if he might actually get the detective to give him one. The detective he had talked to when he went to fill out the application forms had a USMC Semper Fi! decalcomania affixed to his desk and Frankie had told him he’d been in the Crotch himself, and they talked about Parris Island and Quantico and 29 Palms, and the detective said he wasn’t promising anything because permits were goddamned hard to get approved-but maybe something could be worked out. He told Frankie to bring in his DD-214, showing his weapons qualifications, so a copy of that could be attached to the application; that might help.

  Frankie explained that while he would be happy to bring in his Form DD-214, which showed that he had qualified as Expert with the. 45, there was a small problem. A fag had come on to him in a slop chute at 29 Palms, and he had kicked the shit out of him, and what his Form DD-214 said about the character of his release from service was “Bad Conduct,” which was not as bad as “Dishonorable,” but wasn’t like “Honorable” either.

  Frankie could tell from the way the detective’s attitude had changed when he told him he’d gotten a “Bad Conduct” discharge from the Crotch that bringing in his DD-214 would be a waste of fucking time, so he never went back.

  He was, therefore, by the act of carrying a concealed firearm, in violation of Section 6106 of the Crimes Code of Pennsylvania, and Sections 907 (Possession of Instrument of Crime), and 908 (Possession of Offensive Weapon) of the Uniform Firearms Act, each of which is a misdemeanor of the first degree punishable by imprisonment of not more than five years and/or a fine of not more than $10,000.

  Mr. Foley was not concerned with the possible ramifications of being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. Primarily, he accepted the folklore of the streets of Philadelphia that on your first bust you got a walk, unless your first bust was for something like raping a nun. The prisons were crowded, and judges commonly gave first offenders a talking-to and a second chance, rather than put them behind bars. Frankie had never been arrested for anything more serious than several traffic violations, once for shoplifting, and once for drunk and disorderly.

  And even if that were not the case, he trusted Mr. Atchison, who did carry a gun, about as far as he could throw the sonofabitch- what kind of a shitheel would hire somebody to kill his own wife? — and he was not going to be around him anywhere at night without something to protect himself.

  More important, the purpose of their meeting was to finalize the details of the verbal contract they had made between themselves, the very planning of which, not to mention the execution, was a far more serious violation of the Crimes Code of Pennsylvania than carrying a gun without a permit.

  In exchange for five thousand dollars, half to be paid now at Max’s, and the other half when the job was done, Mr. Foley had agreed to “eliminate” Mrs. Alicia Atchison, Mr. Atchison’s twenty-five-year-old wife,
who Mr. Atchison said had been unfaithful to him, and Mr. Anthony J. Marcuzzi, fifty-two, Mr. Atchison’s business partner, who, Mr. Atchison said, had been stealing from him.

  Frankie wasn’t sure whether Marcuzzi had really been stealing from the Inferno-it was more likely that Atchison just wanted him out of the way. Maybe he was stealing from Marcuzzi, and was afraid Marcuzzi was catching on-but he was sure that his wife’s fucking around on him wasn’t the reason Atchison wanted her taken care of. Atchison had another broad Frankie knew about, another young one, and probably he figured that since he was having Marcuzzi taken care of, he might as well get rid of them both at once. Or maybe he thought it would look more convincing if she got knocked off when Marcuzzi got it. Or maybe there was insurance on her or something.

  But whatever his reasons, it wasn’t because he was really pissed off that she had let somebody get into her pants. Two weeks after Frankie had met Gerry Atchison, before Atchison had talked to him about taking care of his wife and Marcuzzi, he had just about come right out and said that if Frankie wanted to fuck Alicia, that was all right with him.

  Frankie had been tempted-Alicia wasn’t at all bad-looking, nice boobs and legs-but had decided against it, as it wasn’t professional. He didn’t want to get involved with somebody he was going to take out.

  On his part, Mr. Foley had not been entirely truthful with Mr. Atchison, either. He was not, as he had led Mr. Atchison, and others, to believe, an experienced hit man who accepted contracts from the mob in Philadelphia (and elsewhere, like New York and Las Vegas) that for one reason or another they would rather not handle themselves.

  This job, in fact, would be his first.

  It was, as he thought of it, putting his foot on the ladder to a successful criminal career. He’d given it a lot of thought when they’d thrown him out of the Crotch. There was a lot of money to be made as a professional criminal. The trouble was, you had to start out doing stupid things like breaking in someplace, or stealing a truck. If you got caught, you spent a long time in jail. And even if you didn’t get caught, unless you had the right connections, you didn’t get shit-a dime on the dollar, if you were lucky-for what you stole.