The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Damn you, Wally,” Helene said.

  “Did you really?” Wohl asked. “Please sit down, Mrs. Kellog. Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but…”

  “Helene, honey, we just can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “Please, sit down,” Wohl repeated.

  She reluctantly did so.

  “Mrs. Kellog, you’re with friends,” Wohl said.

  The door buzzer sounded again. Helene glanced toward the stairway with fright in her eyes.

  “That has to be McFadden,” Wohl said. “You want to let him in, Matt?”

  It was McFadden, laden with a kraft paper bag.

  “I stopped by McDonald’s and got some Egg Mc-Muffins,” he said, handing Matt the bag as he reached the top of the stairs. “I thought maybe you hadn’t eaten.”

  “I really want to go,” Helene said, getting up from the table.

  “Who’s that?” McFadden asked.

  “Charley, this is Mrs. Helene Ke1log,” Wohl said. “Mrs. Kellog, this is Detective McFadden.”

  “Please, Wally,” Helene said.

  “I’m going to have to be firm about this,” Wohl said. “If you’ve had a death threat, I want to know about it. If you won’t tell me about it, Mrs. Kellog, Wally will have to.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have come here,” Helene said, but, with resignation, she sat back down.

  “At least we have enough food,” Wohl said. “Have you had any breakfast, Mrs. Kellog?”

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Have an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee,” Wohl said. “Wally will tell me what’s happened, and then you can fill in any blanks.”

  Milham looked as if he was torn between regret that he had to tell Wohl and relief.

  “Helene called me at the Roundhouse last night,” he said. “She told me there had been a telephone call.”

  “Where was she?”

  “At my mother’s,” Helene said. “I mean, I got the call at my mother’s. I called Wally from the Red Robin Diner.”

  “And what exactly did your caller say?”

  “He told me that unless I kept my mouth shut, I’d get the same thing that happened to Jerry,” Helene said.

  “In just about those exact words?”

  “He used dirty words,” she said.

  “You didn’t happen to recognize the voice?” Wohl asked. She shook her head.

  “I can certainly understand why you’re upset,” Wohl said.

  “Upset? I’m scared to death. Not only for me. I’m afraid for my mother and father.”

  “Well, I was about to say, you’re safe now. We’re friends, Mrs. Kellog. You think this call came from somebody on the Narcotics Five Squad?”

  “Of course it did,” Helene snapped. “Who else? What I’d like to know…”

  Wohl waited a moment for her to continue, and when she did not, he asked, gently: “What would you like to know?”

  “Nothing, forget it.”

  “She’d like to know how that damned Five Squad heard she’d talked to Washington,” Wally Milham said. “And so would I.”

  “And so would I,” Wohl said. “We’ll find out. And until we do, until we get to the bottom of this, you won’t be alone, Mrs. Kellog. You’re living with your mother for the time being?”

  “I was. Not now. I don’t want them involved in this.”

  “So where will you be staying?”

  “Helene stayed in a motel last night,” Milham said.

  “That can get kind of expensive,” Wohl thought aloud. “Isn’t there some place you can stay?”

  Helene and Wally looked at each other helplessly. “She could stay here,” Matt heard himself say. The others looked at him in what was more confusion than surprise. “My mother’s been on my back for me to stay with her for a couple of days.”

  “I couldn’t do that,’ Helene said.

  “I know it’s not much,” Matt said. “But if anybody was looking for you, they wouldn’t look for you here. And there’s a rent-a-cop downstairs twenty-four hours a day. And it’s just going to sit here, empty.”

  “Jesus, Payne,” Milham said. “That’s very nice of you, but…”

  “Why not?” Matt said. “I mean, really, why not?”

  “I told you you were among friends, Mrs. Kellog,” Wohl said. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  “I just don’t know,” she said, and started to sniffle.

  “I think you should, honey,” Milham said.

  “OK. It’s settled,” Matt said.

  “Thank you very much,” Helene said, formally. “Just for a few days.”

  “Wally, you take her to get her things, and then come back here,” Wohl ordered.

  “Right,” Milham said, and then, quickly, as if he was afraid she would change her mind, “Come on, honey. Let’s go.”

  “If I’m not here when you get back, I’ll leave a key with the rent-a-cop,” Matt said.

  Helene looked at him.

  “Wally was right,” she said. “He said you were a very nice guy.”

  When they had gone down the stairs, and heard the door close after them, Wohl said, “That was nice of you, Matt.”

  “Christ, they can’t afford living in a motel,” Matt said.

  “And won’t your mother be pleasantly surprised to have you at home?” Wohl asked drolly. He stood up and went to the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Inspector Wohl for the Chief,” he said a moment later, and then: “Chief, I promised to let you know if anything interesting happened. The Widow Kellog got a death threat-specifically, ‘Keep your mouth shut, or you’ll get the same thing as your husband,’ or words to that effect embroidered with obscenity-last night.”

  The outraged, familiar voice of Chief Inspector Lowenstein could be heard all over the kitchen: “I’ll be goddamned! Where is she?”

  “With Detective Milham. He took her to fetch some clothing. Matt Payne offered her his apartment to stay in.”

  “That really burns me up,” Lowenstein said, unnecessarily adding, “what happened to her. That was nice of Payne. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going, first of all, to have someone sit on her. Discreetly.”

  “Your people?”

  “My people, and since we’re going to have to do this around the clock, I’d like to borrow one of yours for as long as this lasts.”

  “Who?”

  “McFadden. He was here, at Payne’s apartment, when this came up.”

  “Northwest Detectives? That McFadden? The one who took down Dutch Moffitt’s murderer?”

  “That McFadden.”

  “OK. He’s yours. I’ll call Northwest Detectives.”

  “Thank you. And then I’m going to give this to Weisbach and Washington. What I would like to know is who told Narcotics Five Squad that she’d talked to Washington.”

  “You don’t know for sure that they know that,” Lowenstein said.

  “No. But it strikes me as highly probable.”

  Lowenstein grunted, and then said: “Peter, if you need anything else, let me know. Keep me posted. And thank you for the call.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  He hung up the telephone, then leaned against the wall.

  “It’s time, I think,” he said thoughtfully, “that we practice a little psychology. That woman is frightened. I think she knows more about what’s going on dirty with that Five Squad than she’s told anybody, including Milham, and right now, he’s the only cop she really trusts. She trusts Matt a little, because Milham likes him, and because he offered the apartment. And she thinks that Washington is straight, otherwise she would never have gone to him. So we’ll try to build a little trust by association.”

  He turned back to the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Jason, is Weisbach there?” he asked, and when the reply was that he wasn’t, added: “Put out the arm for him, please, and ask him to meet me at Payne’s ap
artment right away. I want you here, too, Jason. Right away.”

  They could not hear what Washington replied.

  “The Widow Kellog got a death threat telephone call this morning, telling her to keep her mouth shut or get the same thing that happened to her husband. Matt offered his apartment as a place for her to stay. Milham just took her to pick up some clothes. When they come back here, I want her to feel she’s surrounded by cops she can trust.”

  And again, Washington made a reply they couldn’t hear.

  “Oh, sure, we’re going to sit on her. I’m taking that threat very seriously. Be prepared, when you get here, to assign, in her hearing, everybody but Tiny a duty schedule to sit on her. I borrowed McFadden from Lowenstein. If you can find Martinez and Tiny, I’d like them here, too. Once she sees that she’s surrounded by cops, I want to leave her alone with you and Weisbach. Maybe you can get her to talk now.”

  Washington made another inaudible reply, to which Wohl responded, “Yeah.”

  Then: “Jason, switch me to Captain Pekach, will you?”

  “David? Are you in uniform?”

  Now Matt and Charley McFadden could hear Pekach’s reply: “Yes, I am.”

  “OK. Good. I want you, in a Highway car, to be parked on the sidewalk in front of Matt Payne’s apartment in twenty minutes. You come up. And I think it would be a good idea to have another Highway car parked with you. Tell them to get out of the car and be standing conspicuously on the sidewalk. I’ll explain it all to you when you get here.”

  He hung up and turned to face Matt and McFadden again.

  “In her presence, I will order the Commanding Officer of Highway to have a Highway car pass her parents’ home not less than once each half hour,” he said. “and to check on any car, or person, who looks halfway suspicious.”

  “You’re really taking that threat seriously, aren’t you’?” Matt asked.

  “Somebody shot her husband,” Wohl said. “If they’re willing to do that once…”

  “If somebody is watching her parents’ house, they’ll probably make the Highway drive-bys.”

  “Good, let’s make them nervous,” Wohl said. He paused, almost visibly having another thought. “If I was wondering what Mrs. Kellog told Washington, I think I’d also be worrying what she told Milham. So I think you’d better stick with him, Matt, instead of sitting on her.”

  “OK.”

  “I think it would also make her feel better to know he’s not walking around alone. Question: Should Milham be here when she talks to Washington or not?”

  “She seems to listen to him,” McFadden said.

  “Yeah,” Matt said.

  “OK. So you pack your bag, Matt, and be ready to get out when I tell you. Take McFadden with you. Go to Homicide and let him read the 75-49s on Kellog. I’ll call Quaire and fix it with him. If anything has come up that looks like it has a connection with this, call me.”

  “Right.”

  When Matt returned to the kitchen after getting dressed, and carrying a small suitcase into which he had put his toilet kit and a spare pair of shoes, Charley McFadden was at the kitchen table, reading the 75-49s on the Inferno job. Wohl was in the living room, studiously writing in his notebook.

  “Interesting,” Charley said. “I’ve never seen Homicide 75-49s before.”

  “That’s because God doesn’t love you,” Matt said piously.

  McFadden looked at him curiously.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Matt said, cheerfully and immediately, and then, chagrined, remembered he was supposed to be grief-stricken.

  “Yeah?” Charley asked suspiciously. “Are you on something? Wohl…” He quickly corrected himself, remembering that Inspector Wohl was ten feet away: “…Inspector Wohl said your sister gave you a pill.”

  Matt didn’t want to get into the subject of the pill, and he didn’t want to lie to McFadden. He avoided a direct reply.

  “I’m OK, Charley.” he said, and leaned over McFadden’s shoulder hoping he could find something in the 75-49s that would allow him to change the subject.

  He found something, on the page Charley was just about to turn facedown.

  “Bingo!”

  McFadden looked up at him.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Look here,” Matt said, and pointed toward the bottom of the page. “We had a tip that the doer was somebody named Frankie. Milham and I, starting from zilch, were out looking for him early this morning. We think we found him, on 2320 South Eighteenth Street. And here’s a Frankie who was in the Inferno, and there’s a description.”

  “I know that neighborhood,” McFadden said, and then was interrupted when the door buzzer sounded.

  “This is Captain Pekach,” a metallic voice announced.

  “Push the button, Charley,” Matt said. “I’ll stack this stuff together.”

  He read again the page Charley had been reading:

  “Well, what do we do now? Go back to your place?” Detective McFadden inquired of Detective Payne as they came out of the Detective Bureau in the Roundhouse and waited for the elevator.

  There had been nothing in the 75-49s on the Kellog job that Matt thought Wohl would be interested in, and nothing much new on the Inferno job that Matt found in Milham’s box.

  “I don’t think so,” Matt said. “I think he’ll get on the radio when whatever is going to happen at the apartment has happened.”

  “So where shall we go in that spanking-new unmarked car? You all have cars like that’?”

  “God loves us.”

  “Knock that shit off, will you, Matt? It’s blasphemous.”

  “Sorry,” Matt said, meaning it. He had trouble remembering that Charley was almost, if not quite, as devoutly Roman Catholic as Mother Moffitt, his grandmother, and took sincere offense at what he had not thought of as anything approaching blasphemy.

  “What are you going to do about that name you picked up on in the 75–49?”

  “Frankie, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait for Milham, I guess.”

  “That’s my neighborhood, Matt. And I think I know a guy who could probably give us a good line on him. Or are you afraid of spooking him?”

  Matt remembered what Milham had said when they had come out of the bar after Milham had told the bartender he was Frankie’s cousin from Conshohocken, that he hoped the bartender would tell Frankie a cop had been looking for him, that it would make Frankie nervous.

  “No. I get the feeling that Milham would like it if Frankie got a little nervous.”

  “OK. Let’s do that.”

  “Who are we going to see?”

  “Sonny Boyle, we went to St. Monica’s at Sixteenth and Porter.”

  Timothy Francis “Sonny” Boyle, who was twenty-seven years of age, weighed 195 pounds, and stood six feet one inch tall, had not known for the past year or so what to think about Charles Thomas McFadden.

  Sonny had decided early on that the world was populated by two kinds of people: those that had to work hard for a living because they weren’t too smart, and a small group of the other kind, who didn’t have to work hard because they used their heads.

  He had been in maybe the second year at Bishop Neuman High School when he had decided he was a member of the small group of the other kind, the kind who lived well by their wits, figuring out the system, and putting it to work for them.

  He had known Charley since the second grade at St. Monica’s, and liked him, really liked him. But that hadn’t stopped him from concluding that Charley was just one more none-too-bright Irish Catholic guy from South Philly who would spend his life doing what other people told him to do, and doing it for peanuts.

  He had not been surprised when Charley had gone on the cops. For people like Charley, it was either going into the service, or going on the cops, or becoming a fireman, or maybe in Charley’s case, since his father worked in the sewers, getting on with U.G.I., the gas company.
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  Charley, Sonny had decided when he had heard that Charley had gone on the cops, would spend his life riding around in a prowl car, or standing in the middle of the street up to his ass in snow and carbon monoxide, directing traffic. With a little bit of luck, and the proper connections, he might make sergeant by the time he retired. And in the meantime, he would do what other people told him to do, and for peanuts.

  Charley, Sonny had decided, wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to make a little extra money as a cop, and if he tried to be smart, he wouldn’t be smart enough and would get caught at it.

  He had really been surprised to hear that Charley had become a detective. It took him a lot of thought to realize that what it probably was was dumb luck. As asshole named Gerry Gallagher had got himself hooked on drugs, desperately needed money, and had tried to stick up the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philly.

  Tough luck for the both of them, the Commanding Officer of the Highway Patrol, a big mean sonofabitch named Captain “Dutch” Moffitt, had been having his dinner in the Waikiki. He tried to be a hero, and Gallagher was dumb enough to shoot him for trying. Killed him. With a little fucking. 22-caliber pistol.

  Now the one thing you don’t want to do, ever, is shoot a cop, any cop. And Moffitt was a captain, and the Commanding Officer of Highway Patrol. There were eight-thousand-plus cops in Philadelphia, and every last fucking one of them had a hard-on for Gallagher.

  If you were white and between sixteen and forty and looked anything like the description the cops put out on the radio, you could count on being stopped by a cop and asked could you prove you weren’t at the Waikiki Diner when the Highway Captain got himself shot.

  Every cop in Philly was looking for Gallagher. Charley McFadden and his partner, a little Spic named Gonzales or Martinez or one of them Spic names like that, had caught him. They chased him down the subway tracks, near the Frankford-Pratt Station in Northeast Philly where the train is elevated. The dumb sonofabitch slipped and got himself cut in little pieces by a train that had come along at the wrong time.

  Now the cops certainly knew, Sonny had reasoned at the time, that McFadden wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and if he had found Gallagher it had to be dumb luck. That didn’t matter. Charley was a fucking hero. He was the cop who got the guy who shot Captain Dutch Moffitt. Got his picture in the newspapers with Mayor Carlucci and everything.