The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I told him that the Narcotics Five Squad is all dirty, that Jerry was dirty, and that they probably are the ones who killed him.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to involve you,” Helene said.

  “Honey, I’m involved,” Wally said, and added, “You’re probably right. Somebody knows you talked to Washington. What did you do, call him up?”

  “I went to see him.”

  “Well, somebody from Five Squad was at Special Operations, and recognized you, or somebody at Special Operations told somebody at Five Squad…”

  “I went to his house,” Helene said. “I didn’t go to Special Operations. Which means that if Five Squad knows, he told them.”

  Milham considered that for two seconds.

  “No. Not Washington. He’s a straight arrow. He didn’t tell anybody, except maybe somebody at Internal Affairs.”

  “What’s the difference? They know.”

  “What are they afraid you’ll tell somebody?”

  Helene shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re doing dirty, just that they are.”

  “Your husband never told you where the money came from?”

  Helene shook her head.

  “Wally, I don’t want them to do anything to my mother and father.”

  “They won’t. The dumbest thing they could do is try to do something to you. Or them. The whole Police Department would come down on them.”

  “Huh!” she snorted. “They don’t want to go to jail; there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

  “They’re just trying to scare you, is all. Christ, I wish you had told me about this. I could have got to Washington and nobody would ever have known.”

  “I told you, I didn’t want to involve you.”

  “And I told you, I’m involved in whatever you do,” Milham said. He reached out for her hand again, and this time she did not move it away.

  When he looked at her face, tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Honey, don’t do that. I can’t stand to see you cry.”

  “Wally, what am I going to do?”

  “The question is what are we going to do. You understand?”

  “OK. We,” Helene said, and tried to smile.

  “OK. So you’re not going back to your mother’s. That’s one thing.”

  “What is she going to say? What do I say to her?”

  “What did you say when you left the house?”

  “I told her I had to go somewhere, and that I would call. She didn’t like it at all.”

  “OK. So you call her again, and tell her you have to go away for a couple of days, and that you’ll call her.”

  “She won’t like it.”

  “Honey, for Christ’s sake! They called you there because they knew you were there.”

  She nodded a grudging acceptance of that.

  “So where do I go?”

  “My place,” he suggested without much conviction in his voice.

  “I can’t do that, and you know it,” Helene said.

  “OK. We’ll talk about that later. Tonight we’ll go to a motel.”

  “Not we, Wally. I’m not up to anything like that.”

  “OK. We get you in a motel. You go to bed. Get your rest. I’ll think of something.”

  “Something what?”

  “I don’t know. Something,” Milham said. “One thing at a time.”

  She looked at him and squeezed his hand.

  “Helene,” Wally said. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re not alone.” She squeezed his hand. “I love you,” Wally said.

  She squeezed his hand again.

  He stood up.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “You think maybe they followed me here?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  But when they went to his car, he looked up and down the street to make sure there was nothing suspicious, and as they drove to the Sheraton Hotel, on Roosevelt Boulevard and Grant Avenue, he made three or four turns to be absolutely sure no one was following them.

  He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, but he understood why she didn’t want him to stay with her, and he knew that he couldn’t press her about that; she would think that all he wanted to do was get in bed with her.

  He got the key from the desk clerk, who sort of smirked at him, making it clear he thought that what they were up to was a little quickie.

  He stood outside the motel door.

  “Get the room number off the phone, and I’ll call you in the morning,” Wally said.

  “OK,” she said, “wait here.”

  She came back with the number written inside a match-book, and handed it to him.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him, and leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thank you, Wally,” she said.

  “Aaaah. I’ll call you in the morning. Just lock the door and get some sleep.”

  “Right.”

  “Good night, Helene. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Right.”

  He had taken a dozen steps toward his car when she called his name.

  “Wally?”

  “Yeah?”

  He walked back to her.

  “Wally, I love you, too,” Helene said.

  “I know,” he said. “But thank you for saying it.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Helene said.

  She took his hand and pulled him into the motel room.

  Matt’s door buzzer sounded.

  He pushed the button that opened the door and went to the top of the stairs to wait for Amanda.

  The doorway was filled with a rent-a-cop, a huge one Matt did not know.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Payne, but there’s a young lady here says you expect her.”

  “Of course,” Matt said, and ran down the stairs.

  “Thanks a lot,” Matt said to the rent-a cop.

  “Hello,” Amanda said softly, and walked quickly past him and up the stairs. She was wearing a suit with a white blouse. He could smell soap.

  He closed the door in the face of the rent-a-cop and went after Amanda, carefully averting his eyes so that she wouldn’t have any reason at all to suspect he was looking up her skirt as she went up the stairs.

  She waited for him at the top of the stairs.

  “You know what he thought, don’t you?” Amanda asked.

  “No. What did he think?”

  “He thought I was a call girl.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not being silly. He as much as accused me in the elevator. And why not? Who else would be going to a bachelor apartment at this hour?”

  “A friend,” Matt said.

  “God, I’m sorry I ever got started on this!”

  “I’m not.”

  “I meant it, Matt, when I said I’m here as a friend.”

  “Absolutely. I know that.”

  She met his eyes, and then quickly averted hers.

  “Do you know how to warm up a hamburger?” Matt asked. “I put the coffee in a pot, and we can heat that. But the hamburgers are cold.”

  “You put the meat patty in a frying pan,” Amanda said. “You have a frying pan?” He nodded. “And-you said french fries?” Matt nodded again. “You put french fries in the oven.”

  “I’ve got one of those, too,” Matt said.

  “Good,” she said. “Show me.”

  “I’m glad you came,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

  “Just as long as you understand why I came,” she said. “OK?”

  “Absolutely. I told you that.”

  She went in the kitchen. He turned the oven on and handed her a frying pan.

  When she bent over to put the french fries in the oven, he looked down her blouse and told himself he was really a sonofabitch.

  When she stood up, he could
tell by the look in her eyes that she knew he had looked down her blouse.

  He backed two steps away from her and smiled uneasily.

  “If anybody finds out I came here,” Amanda said, “they wouldn’t understand.”

  “Nobody will ever find out,” Matt said. He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s Honor.”

  “Oh, God,” Amanda groaned.

  “Bad joke,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “And they would, of course, be right,” Amanda said. “Oh, hell! ‘In for a penny’- oh, God! — ‘in for a pound.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know what my reaction was when I heard Penny was dead?”

  “What?”

  “Thank God. She was going to suck Matt dry and ruin his life.” She looked intently at his face, then moaned. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have told you!”

  “Isn’t that why you came here, to tell me that? Amanda, that’s really-decent-of you. And it really took balls.”

  “Balls?” she parroted, gently mocking.

  “It took courage,” he corrected himself. “But you’re not the only one who felt that way. Penny…Penny apparently did not enjoy the universal approval of my friends. Half a dozen people told me exactly, or paraphrased, what you just did.”

  “That’s not why I came,” Amanda said. “I wanted to be with you.”

  “You’re a good friend,” Matt said.

  She met his eyes, then looked away, and then met them again.

  “Maybe that, too,” Amanda said softly.

  “Jesus, Amanda.”

  “Does that come as such a surprise? Am I making as much of a fool of myself as I think I am?”

  He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.

  She moved her head away and looked to the side.

  “For God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for me,” she said.

  “What I’m doing is wondering what would happen if I tried to put my arms around you.”

  She turned her face to look at him. She looked into his eyes for a long moment.

  “Why don’t you try it and find out?” Amanda asked.

  SEVENTEEN

  Matt Payne rolled over in bed, grabbed the telephone on the bedside table, and snarled, “Hello.”

  “Good morning,” Amanda Spencer said, a chuckle in her voice. “Somehow I thought you’d be in a better mood than you sound like.”

  Still half asleep, Matt turned and looked in confusion at where he expected Amanda to be, lying beside him. He was obviously alone in his bed.

  “Where are you?”

  “Thirtieth Street Station,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You have to come here to get on a train.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “I have a job, Matt.”

  “Call in and tell them you were run over by a truck.”

  “It was something like that, wasn’t it? How do you feel this morning?”

  “Right now, desolate.”

  She chuckled again.

  “Don’t call me, Matt. I’ll call you.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “This is what I think they call the cold, cruel light of day,” Amanda said. “I need some time to think.”

  “Second thoughts, you mean? Morning-after regrets?”

  “I said I need some time to think. But no regrets.”

  “Me either,” he said.

  He was now fully awake. He picked his watch up from the bedside table. It was ten past eight.

  “You could have said something,” he said, somewhat petulantly.

  “I’m saying it now,” Amanda said. “I have a job, I have to go to work, and I need some time to think.”

  “Damn!”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t really want to leave. But it was the sensible thing to do.”

  “Screw sensible.”

  “Have you got any morning-after regrets?”

  “I’m still in shock, but no regrets.”

  “We both got a little carried away last night.”

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “That’s what I want to think about,” Amanda said. “I’ll call you, Matt. Don’t call me.”

  The phone went dead in his ear.

  “Damn!”

  “Push the damned button, Matt,” Inspector Peter Wohl said into the microphone beside Detective Payne’s doorbell. “The Wachenhut guy told me he knows you’re up there.”

  A moment later the solenoid buzzed, and Wohl pushed the door open and started up the narrow flight of stairs.

  “I didn’t know who it was,” Matt said from the head of the stairs. He was wearing khaki trousers, a gray, battered University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt, and was obviously fresh from the shower.

  He looks more than a little sleepy, Peter thought. Probably still feeling the pill Amy gave him.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I was just about to go out and get some breakfast.”

  “Not necessary,” Wohl said, handing him a large kraft paper bag. “Never let it be said that I do not take care of my underlings.”

  Matt sniffed it.

  “Smells great. What is it?”

  “Western omelet, bagels, orange juice, and coffee.”

  “Thank you, Peter,” Matt said.

  “I expected to find you still in bed,” Wohl said.

  “Huh?”

  “Amy said that the pill she gave you…” Wohl stopped. He had followed Matt into the kitchen and seen the stack of Forms 75–49. “What’s this?”

  “75-49s on the Inferno job,” Matt said. “Milham told me to read them.”

  “When did you see Milham?”

  “Last night. Early this morning. I went over there-”

  “You didn’t take Amy’s pill?” Wohl asked, but it was a statement rather than a question.

  “No, I didn’t,” Matt confessed. “I had a couple of drinks here, decided going to the FOP was a good idea, started out for there, changed my mind, and went to Homicide.”

  “Why?” Wohl asked, a tone of exasperation in his voice.

  “At the time it seemed like a good idea,” Matt said.

  Wohl reached into his jacket pocket and came out with an interoffice memorandum. He handed it to Matt.

  “One of the reasons I came here was to show you this. I guess you’ve seen it.”

  Matt glanced at it.

  “Yeah. Milham had a copy.”

  “Lowenstein sent me one,” Wohl said, taking the memorandum back and then crumpling it in his fist. He looked around, remembered the garbage can was under the sink, and went to it and dropped the memorandum in it.

  “For some reason, I’m not sore at you,” Wohl said. “I think I should be.”

  “I didn’t want that damned pill,” Matt said.

  “That, I understand. But you shouldn’t have gone to Homicide until I sent you.”

  “Sorry,” Matt said.

  “Oh, hell, I’d have probably done the same thing myself,” Wohl said. “Unwrap the omelets.”

  “Lieutenant Natali was very nice to me,” Matt said.

  “Natali’s a nice fellow,” Wohl said. “Where’s your cups? I hate coffee in a paper cup.”

  “In the cabinet.”

  “Are you really all right? Amy thinks you’re still in what she calls a condition called ‘grief shock.’”

  “Amy’s a nice girl,” Matt said, gently mocking. “But what I’m in is a condition called ‘Oh, what a sonofabitch you are, Matt Payne.’”

  “I told you, what Penny did to herself wasn’t your fault.”

  “Somebody came to see me last night,” Matt said. “To comfort me in my condition of grief shock.”

  “Somebody, I gather from the tone of your voice, female. And?”

  “She comforted me,” Matt said.

  Wohl looked at him to make sure he had correctly interpreted what he had said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t
think I want to tell you.”

  “Nice kind of girl, or the other?”

  “Very nice kind of girl.”

  “Good for you,” Wohl said. “But I don’t think I’d tell Amy.”

  “I’ve been trying to wallow in guilt, but I don’t seem to be able to.”

  “What’s in it for the girl?”

  “I just think she was being nice. Maybe a little more.”

  “The one from New York? Amanda, something like that?”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “I saw her looking at you at Martha Peebles’s.”

  “I didn’t see her at Martha Peebles’s.”

  “I repeat, good for you, Matt. Don’t wallow in guilt.”

  The door buzzer sounded.

  Matt looked surprised.

  “Detective McFadden, I’ll bet,” Wohl said. “Here to comfort you in your condition of grief shock, with firm orders to keep you off the sauce.”

  “You really do take care of me, don’t you?” Matt asked.

  “Somebody has to, or the first thing you know, you’re crawling around on a ledge like an orangutan.”

  “Thank you, Peter,” Matt said, pushing the button to open the door, and walked to the head of the stairs.

  It was, instead of Detective McFadden, Detective Milham.

  “You’re up, I hope?” Milham asked. “I know I said ten…”

  “Having breakfast. Come on up.”

  “I’ve got somebody with me. Is that all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Milham took a step backward and a woman Matt had never seen before, but who he intuited was the Widow Kellog, appeared in the doorway and started up the stairs.

  “I know we’re intruding,” she said as she reached Matt.

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m Helene Kellog,” she said.

  “Matt Payne,” Matt said. “How do you do? Come on in.”

  He led her to the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Kellog, this is Inspector Wohl.”

  “Oh, God,” Helene said.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Kellog?” Wohl said politely, standing up.

  Milham appeared.

  It’s a toss-up, Matt thought, which of them looks unhappier at finding Wohl up here.

  “Hello, Wally,” Wohl said. “How are you?”

  “Wally, we should leave,” Helene said.

  “Not on my account, I hope,” Wohl said.

  “Inspector-” Milham began, and then stopped. Wohl looked at him curiously. “Inspector, Mrs. Kellog got a death threat last night.”