The Witness

by W. E. B Griffin

  “So what are you going to do today?”

  “I got court,” Charley replied. “Which means I get off at four.”

  “I told you, they’re paying me double-time.”

  “How come?”

  “Because it’s less than twenty-four hours since my last overtime tour. I got overtime yesterday too.”

  “You’re not getting enough sleep,” Charley said.

  “So tonight, after I meet you in the FOP at seven-fifteen, and we have dinner, I go to bed early.”

  The Fraternal Order of Police, on Spring Garden Street, was just a couple of minutes walk from Hahnemann Hospital on North Broad Street in downtown Philadelphia.

  “Yeah,” he said. “This isn’t a hell of a lot of fun, is it?”

  “Most people are broke when they get married, and have to go in debt. We won’t be.”

  “To hell with it. Let’s get married and go in debt.”

  She laughed and leaned over and kissed him again.

  They had breakfast in the medical staff cafeteria at Temple Hospital. The food was good and reasonable and there was a place to park the Volkswagen. As long as she was wearing a nurse’s uniform and her R.N. pin, she could eat there. When she was in regular clothes, for some reason, they wouldn’t let her do that.

  Charley sometimes felt a little uncomfortable when he was in his Highway uniform and they ate there. He had the feeling that some of the medical personnel had started believing the bullshit the Philadelphia Ledger had been printing about the cops generally, and Highway specifically. The Ledger had really been on Highway’s ass, with that “Carlucci’s Commandos” and “Gestapo” bullshit, so it wasn’t really surprising. People believe what they read.

  He thought that if he was really a Highway guy, maybe he wouldn’t be so sensitive about it. Nobody in the world knew it but Margaret, but the truth was, he didn’t like Highway. What he really wanted to be was a detective.

  If I was in here in plainclothes, nobody would give me a second look; they would think I was a doctor, or a pill salesman, or something.

  When they finished breakfast, Charley got in the Volkswagen and drove to Highway headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler Streets in Northeast Philadelphia.

  There, he met his partner, Police Officer Gerald “Gerry” D. Quinn, who was thirty-three, had been on the job eleven years and in Highway for five years.

  The very first day he and Quinn had gone on patrol together, they had stopped a ’72 Buick for speeding. It had turned out to be stolen. The case was finally coming up for trial today.

  They stood roll call, and then drew a car, Highway 22, a year-old Chevrolet with 97,000-odd miles on its odometer. If by some miracle the trial went off as scheduled, they could then go on patrol. They drove downtown to City Hall at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets and parked just outside the southeast corner entrance.

  Just off the southeast stairwell is Court Attendance, an administrative unit of the Police Department, which tries to keep track of which police officer is to testify at what time in which courtroom. They checked in there, learned where they were supposed to go to testify, and then went to the stairwell itself, where a blind concessionaire brewed what most police agreed was the worst coffee in the Delaware River Basin. They shot the bull with other cops for a while, and then went upstairs to their courtroom to wait for their case to be called.

  The day began for Staff Inspector Peter Frederick Wohl at about the same time, a few minutes before six, as it had for Officer Charles McFadden.

  Wohl was wakened by the ringing of one of the two telephones on the bedside table in his bedroom in his apartment. His over-a-six-car-garage apartment had once been the chauffeur’s quarters of a turn-of-the-century mansion on the 800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill. The mansion itself had been divided into luxury apartments.

  “Inspector Wohl,” he said, somewhat formally. The phone that had been ringing was the official phone, paid for by the Police Department.

  “Six o’clock, sir. Good morning.”

  It was the voice of the tour lieutenant at Bustleton and Bowler. The voice was familiar, and so was the face he could put to it—that of a lieutenant newly assigned to Special Operations—but he could not come up with a name.

  “Good morning,” Wohl said, as cheerfully as he could manage. “How goes the never-ending war against crime?”

  The lieutenant chuckled.

  “I don’t know about that, sir. But I can report your car is back from the garage. Shall I have someone run it over to you?”

  For the first time, Wohl remembered what had happened to his car, an unmarked nearly brand-new Ford LTD four-door sedan. The sonofabitch had just died on him. He had been stopped by the red light at Mount Airy and Germantown Avenue on the way home from Commissioner Czernich’s soiree, and when the light changed, the Ford had moved fifteen feet forward and lurched to a stop.

  When he tried to start it, the only thing that happened was the lights dimmed. The radio still worked, happily. He had called for a police tow truck, and then asked Police Radio to have the nearest Highway or Special Operations car meet him.

  By the time the tow truck reached him, a Highway RPC, a Highway sergeant, and the Special Operations/Highway lieutenant were already there. The lieutenant had driven him home.

  Wohl sat up and swung his feet out of bed, hoping to clear his brain.

  “Let me think,” he said.

  If they sent somebody over with his car, it would be someone who should be out on the street, or someone who was going off-duty, and thus should not be doing a white shirt a favor.

  On the other hand, he was reluctant to drive his personal car over to Bustleton and Bowler for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it might get “accidentally” bumped by a Highway Patrolman who believed Peter Wohl to be the devil reincarnate.

  Peter Wohl’s personal automobile was a twenty-three-year-old Jaguar XK-120 drophead roadster. He had spent four years and more money than he liked to think about rebuilding it from the frame up.

  And even if I did drive it over there, he finally decided, when the day is over I will be back on square one, since I obviously cannot drive both the Jag and the Department’s Ford back here at the same time.

  “Let me call you if I need a ride, Lieutenant,” Wohl said. “If you don’t hear from me, just forget it.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be here.”

  Wohl hung up the official telephone and picked up the one he paid for and dialed a number from memory.

  “Hello.”

  “Peter Wohl, Matt. Did I wake you?”

  “No, sir. I had to get out of bed to take a shower.”

  “You sound pretty chipper this morning, Officer Payne.”

  “We celibates always sleep, sir, with a clear conscience and wake up chipper.”

  Wohl chuckled, and then asked, “Have you had breakfast?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll swap you a breakfast of your choice for a ride to work. The Ford broke last night. They fixed it and took it to Bustleton and Bowler.”

  “Thirty minutes?”

  “Thank you, Matt. I hate to put you out.”

  “You did say, sir, you were buying breakfast?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Thirty minutes, sir.”

  THREE

  Officer Matthew M. Payne had just about finished dressing when Wohl called. Like Wohl, he was a bachelor. He lived in a very nice, if rather small, apartment on the top floor of a turn-of-the-century mansion on Rittenhouse Square. The lower floors of the building, owned by his father, now housed the Delaware Valley Cancer Society.

  A tall, lithely muscled twenty-two-year-old, Payne had graduated the previous June from the University of Pennsylvania and had almost immediately joined the Police Department. He was assigned as “administrative assistant” to Inspector Wohl, who commanded the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department. It was a plainclothes assignment.

&
nbsp; He put the telephone back into its cradle and then walked to the fireplace, where he tied his necktie in the mirror over the mantel. He put his jacket on and then went back to the fireplace and took his Smith & Wesson “Undercover” .38 Special five-shot revolver and its ankle holster from the mantelpiece and strapped it to his ankle.

  Then he left the apartment, went down the narrow stairs to the fourth floor, and got on the elevator to the parking garage in the basement.

  There he got into a new silver Porsche 911, his graduation present from his father, and drove out of the garage, waving at the Holmes Security Service rent-a-cop as he passed his glassed-in cubicle. For a long time the rent-a-cop, a retired Traffic Division corporal, was the only person in the building who knew that Payne was a policeman.

  There had been a lot of guessing by the two dozen young women who worked for the Cancer Society about just who the good-looking young guy who lived in the attic apartment was. He had been reliably reported to be a stockbroker, a lawyer, in the advertising business, and several other things. No one had suggested that he might be a cop; cops are not expected to dress like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers or to drive new silver Porsche 911s.

  But then Officer Payne had shot to death one Warren K. Fletcher, thirty-one, of a Germantown address, whom the newspapers had taken to calling “the Northwest serial rapist” and his photograph, with Mayor Jerry Carlucci’s arm around him, had been on the front pages of all the newspapers, and his secret was out.

  He was not an overly egotistical young man, but it seemed to him that after the shooting, the looks of invitation in the eyes of the Cancer Society’s maidens had seemed to intensify.

  There were two or three of them he thought he would like to get to know, in the biblical sense, but he had painful proof when he was at the University of Pennsylvania that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was more than a cleverly turned phrase. A woman scorned who worked where he lived, he had concluded, was too much of a risk to take.

  Matt Payne drove to Peter Wohl’s apartment via the Schuylkill Expressway, not recklessly, but well over the speed limit. He was aware that he was in little danger of being stopped (much less cited) for speeding. The Schuylkill Expressway was patrolled by officers of the Highway Patrol, all of whom were aware that Inspector Wohl’s administrative assistant drove a silver Porsche 911.

  Wohl was waiting for him when Payne arrived, leaning against one of the garage doors.

  “Funny, you don’t look celibate,” Wohl said as he got in the car.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Let’s go somewhere nice, Matt. I know I’m buying, but the condemned man is entitled to a hearty meal.”

  “I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Matt replied.

  “Not you, me. Condemned, I mean. They want me in the commissioner’s office at ten. I’m sure what he wants to know is how the Magnella job is going.”

  Officer Joseph Magnella, twenty-four, had been found lying in the gutter beside his 22nd District RPC (radio patrol car) with seven .22 bullets in his body. Mayor Carlucci had given the job to Special Operations. A massive effort, led by two of the best detectives in the department, to find the doers had so far come up with nothing.

  “Nothing came up overnight?” Matt asked softly.

  “Not a goddamned clue, to coin a phrase,” Wohl said bitterly. “I told them to call me if anything at all came up. Nobody called.”

  Payne braked before turning onto Norwood Street.

  “How about The Country Club?” he asked.

  The Country Club was a diner with a reputation for good food on Cottman Avenue in the Northeast, along their route to Bustleton and Bowler.

  “Fine,” Wohl said.

  Wohl bought a copy of the Ledger from a vending machine as they walked into the restaurant, glanced at the headlines, and then flipped through it until he found what he was looking for.

  “Somewhat self-righteously,” he said, handing the paper to Matt, “the Ledger comments editorially on the incompetence of the Police Department, vis-à-vis the murder of Officer Magnella.”

  The waitress appeared and handed them menus.

  “Breakfast steak, pink in the middle, two fried eggs, sunny side up, home fries, an English muffin, orange juice, milk, and coffee,” Payne ordered without looking at the menu.

  “If you’re what you say you are, where do you get the appetite?” Wohl said, and added, “Toast and coffee, please.”

  “I have high hopes,” Payne replied. “You have to eat, Inspector.”

  “Who do you think you are, my mother?”

  “Think of the starving children in India,” Payne said. “How they would love a breakfast steak.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Wohl groaned, but after a moment added, “Okay. Do that twice, please, miss.”

  Payne read the editorial and handed the newspaper back.

  “You didn’t expect anything else, did you?” Payne asked.

  “I can ignore those bastards when they’re wrong. But it smarts when they’re right.”

  “Harris and Washington will come up with something.”

  “He said, not really believing it.”

  “I believe it.”

  “As a matter of fact, the longer they don’t come up with something, the greater the odds are that they won’t,” Wohl said.

  The waitress delivered the coffee, milk, and orange juice, sparing Payne having to respond. He was grateful; he hated to sound like a cheerleader.

  Wohl ate everything put before him, but absently. He volunteered no further conversation, and Payne decided he should keep his mouth shut.

  They were halfway between The Country Club and Special Operations headquarters when Wohl decided to tell Payne about Lieutenant Jack Malone.

  “We’re getting a new lieutenant this morning,” he said. “And Lucci’s being transferred out.”

  “That sounds like bad news-good news.”

  “Lieutenant Malone used to be Commissioner Cohan’s driver. Cohan is behind the transfer.”

  “Then it’s good news-good news?”

  “Not necessarily,” Wohl said. “Cohan sprung this on me at Commissioner Czernich’s reception. Malone’s had some personal problems, and in a manner of speaking has been working too hard. Cohan wants to take some of the pressure off him. He’s had the Auto Squad in Major Crimes; that’s where Lucci’s going. It’s a good job. Cohan’s afraid that Malone will think he’s been shanghaied to us. Which means that I have—”

  “Has he?” Payne interrupted. “Been shanghaied to us?”

  “I used the wrong word. Punished would be better. He’s been shanghaied in the sense that he didn’t ask for the transfer, and probably doesn’t like the idea, but I’m not really sure if he just needs some of the pressure taken off, or whether Cohan is sending him a message. Cohan made it plain that he expects me to put him to work doing something worthy of his talent.”

  “What did he do?” Payne asked.

  Why the hell did I tell him any of this in the first place?

  “He caught his wife in bed with a lawyer and beat them up.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yeah, both of them. But that’s not why he’s being sent to us, I don’t think. The pressure began to affect his work.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  And aside from that, the problems, personal or professional, of a lieutenant are really none of the business of a police officer. But I started this, didn’t I? And Payne is really more than a run-of-the-mill young cop, isn’t he?

  “He’s got a wild idea that Bob Holland is involved in auto theft,” Wohl said.

  “Holland Cadillac?” Matt asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he?”

  “I don’t know. It strikes me as damned unlikely. If I had to bet, I’d say no. Why should he be? He’s got a dealership on every other corner in Philadelphia. Presumably, they’re making money. He sold the city the mayor�
�s limousine. Hell, my father bought his Buick from him; he gives a police discount, whatever the hell that is. And Commissioner Cohan obviously doesn’t think so; he thinks that the pressure got to Malone and his imagination ran away with him.”

  “He was at the club yesterday. I saw him in the bar with that congressman I think is light on his feet.”

  “Holland?” Wohl asked, and when Payne nodded, he went on, “Which club was that?”

  “We played at Whitemarsh Valley.”

  “So Holland has friends in high places, right? Is that what you’re driving at?”

  “It would explain why the commissioner wants him out of the Auto Squad.”

  “Yeah,” Wohl agreed a moment later. “Well, if Holland is doing hot cars, that’s now Lucci’s concern, not Malone’s.”

  And I will make sure that Lieutenant Jack Malone clearly understands that.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Payne asked.

  “We now have a plans and training officer,” Wohl said. “His name is Lieutenant John J. Malone.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” Wohl said.

  When Payne pulled into the parking lot, it was half past seven. The cars of Captain Mike Sabara, Wohl’s deputy, and Captain Dave Pekach, the commanding officer of Highway Patrol, were already there. Payne wondered if Wohl had sent for them—the normal duty day began at eight—or whether they had come in early on their own.

  Once inside the building, Wohl, Sabara, and Pekach went into Wohl’s office and closed the door. Payne understood that his presence was not desired.

  He told the sergeant on the desk that if the inspector was looking for him, he had gone to park his car and to get the inspector’s car.

  When he came back and sat down at his desk, Wohl’s phone began to ring.

  “Inspector Wohl’s office, Officer Payne.”

  “My name is Special Agent Davis of the FBI,” the caller said. “Inspector Wohl, please.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, the inspector is tied up. May I have him call you back?”

  “I wonder if you would please tell him that Special Agent in Charge Davis wants just a moment of time, and see if he’ll speak to me?”