The Witness

by W. E. B Griffin

  And then the flashbulb went off, Farnsworth Stillwell told Officer Payne that if he needed anything, anything at all, all he had to do was let him know, and they were gone.

  “I don’t like that sonofabitch,” Denny Coughlin said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he really does get to be governor.”

  “Really?” Matt asked.

  “So how are you, Matty?” Denny Coughlin asked.

  “Worried about my car,” Matt said, looking at Charley.

  “I got it downstairs,” Charley said. “Aside from no radio, doors, or seats, it’s okay.”

  “You’d better be kidding.”

  “I got it downstairs, all in one piece. Inspector Wohl asked me to ask you where you want it.”

  “In the garage under the apartment, please.”

  “You got it. You need anything else?”

  “Can’t think of anything.”

  “I’ll come see you when I get off. But I’d better get going now. Quinn’s sitting in the car about to shit a brick.”

  “Thanks, Charley,” Matt said.

  Dennis V. Coughlin closed the door after McFadden, and then exhaled audibly. He walked to the bed and sat down on it.

  “Jesus, Matty, you gave us a scare. What the hell happened?”

  This is more than a godfather, more than my blood father’s buddy, doing his duty, Matt suddenly realized. This man loves me.

  He remembered that his father, the other father, the only one he had ever known, Brewster C. Payne, had told him that he believed Dennis V. Coughlin had always been in love with his mother.

  “Lieutenant Suffern let us out of his car in the alley behind Stevens’s house—”

  “You and O’Hara?”

  “Yeah. We were waiting for the ACT team and the sergeant to bring Stevens down so Mickey could get a picture. Then I heard a noise, a creaking noise, like wood breaking. I think now it was Stevens coming over a fence. Anyway, all of a sudden, there he was shooting at us.”

  “He shot first?”

  “He shot first.”

  “That makes it justifiable homicide. You’re absolutely sure he shot first?”

  “Hey, I thought you were here to comfort me on my bed of pain, not interview me?”

  “Are you in pain?” Coughlin asked, concern and possibly even a hint of pity—or maybe shame—in his voice.

  “No, Uncle Denny, I’m not,” Matt said, and touched the older man’s shoulder. After a moment, Coughlin’s hand came up and covered his.

  “It’ll probably start to hurt later, Matty,” he said. “But they’ll give you something for it. I’m sure.”

  Their eyes met.

  Coughlin stood up.

  “I got to go. You need anything, you know how to reach me.”

  FIFTEEN

  A motherly, very large black woman wearing a badge identifying her as a licensed practical nurse delivered a fried egg on limp toast sandwich, a container of milk, and a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  “Lunch is at eleven-thirty,” she announced. “Unless you like beans and franks you won’t be thrilled.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know how to work the TV clicker?”

  She showed him, walked to the door to leave, and then turned.

  “I heard what happened,” she said. “Good for you. Animals like that bum you shot are taking over the city.”

  Matt found the controls for the bed, adjusted the back to his satisfaction, and turned on the television. Not surprising him at all, there was nothing on that he would watch if he were not in a hospital bed feeling lousy and with his leg wrapped up like that of an Egyptian mummy.

  If it were Saturday morning, he thought, at least I could watch the teenagers flopping their boobs around on that dance show on WCAU-TV.

  He settled for a quiz show, quickly deciding that the participants had been chosen not for their potential ability to call forth trivia but rather on their ability to jump up and down, shrieking with joy, when they were awarded a lifetime supply of acne medication.

  His calf began to feel prickly, as if it had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him he could feel blood pumping through it.

  The door opened and a handsome young man with long blond hair entered, bearing a floral display.

  “Where do you want this, buddy?”

  “On that dresser, I suppose.”

  The handsome young man jerked the card free from the display and tossed it onto the bed and left.

  The card read, “Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery. Fraternal Order of Police.”

  Officer Payne was surprised at how much the gesture touched him.

  There was no question about it now, he could feel the beating of his heart in his calf.

  The moron on television, even though he had eagerly pushed the I-know-the-answer button, erroneously located Casablanca in Tunisia, the you-goofed fog horn sounded, and the moron’s face registered as much sorrow as if his mother had just been run over by a truck.

  The door opened again, to another florist’s delivery man, this one bearing two floral displays. One of the cards read, “Mother, Dad, & House Apes.” The second, “Charley & Margaret.”

  He was aware that he had audibly let his breath out, and then that it was more than that; he had moaned. Every time his heart made his leg throb, it hurt.

  Well, why am I surprised? They told me it would start to hurt.

  With some effort, (the device, at the end of an electrical cord, had fallen off the back of the bed when he had raised it) he found the button to summon the nurse.

  A minute or so later, the door opened, but it was not an angel of mercy with the wherewithal to deaden his pain, but another delivery person, this one female, fat, and bearing an expensively wrapped package.

  “You’re the one who got shot, aren’t you?” she greeted him. “I seen it in the newspaper.”

  Whoopee! Ring the you-got-it-right! siren. You have just won a year’s supply of Acne Free!

  “I guess I am.”

  The package contained a pound of Barricini assorted chocolates and a copy of Art Buchwald’s latest book. The card read, “Ask the nurse to explain the big words to you. Amy.”

  Jesus Christ, I hurt! Where the hell is that goddamn nurse?

  The nurse’s head appeared in the partially opened door. A new one. This one was blond, and had intelligent hazel eyes in a very attractive face.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  Nice voice. Deep. Soft. I wonder what the rest of her looks like?

  “Actually, there are two.”

  “Oh?”

  “I hurt.”

  “And?”

  “Nature calls.”

  “Bowels or bladder?”

  “Bladder,” he said, and then reconsidered. “Probably both.”

  God, what a perfectly wonderful way to begin a romantic conversation.

  The head withdrew from the door, and the door closed.

  “I give you my personal guarantee,” Mr. Robert Holland announced sincerely from the television screen, “that you’ll never get a better deal anywhere in the Delaware Valley than you’ll get from me. Step into any one of our locations today, and one of our sales counselors of integrity will prove it to you.”

  “You hypocritical fucking thief!” Officer Payne responded indignantly.

  The nurse returned, more quickly than Matt had expected, carrying a tray with a tiny paper cup on it, and two stainless-steel devices, one under her arm, which reminded Matt of the phrase “form follows function.”

  The rest of her was as attractive as her face. She was tall, and lithe, and moved with grace.

  Scandinavian, he thought. Or maybe one of those Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia. Maybe Polish? Jesus, she’s attractive!

  She put the functional utensils on the bed beside him, and then half filled a plastic glass with water from a carafe. Then she handed him the tiny paper cup. There was one very small pill, half the size of an aspirin in it.

  “What’s this?
”

  “Demerol.”

  “Will it work?”

  “The doctor apparently thinks so.”

  Matt shrugged, then reached into the cup for the pill. He lost it between the cup and his lip.

  The nurse shook her head, and then when Matt was unable to find it in the folds of his sheets found it for him.

  “Watch,” she said. She picked up the cup, stuck out her tongue, and then mimed upending the pill cup onto her tongue.

  “Think you can manage that?”

  “I’ll give it a good shot.”

  She dropped the pill into the paper cup and handed it to him.

  “How do I know you don’t have some loathsome disease?” Matt asked.

  “She said you’d probably be trouble,” the nurse said.

  “Who’s she?”

  “Margaret McCarthy,” the nurse said. “Trust me. Take your pill.”

  He succeeded in getting the pill into his mouth and then swallowing it.

  “How do you know Margaret?”

  “We’re going for our BSs at Temple together,” the nurse said.

  “Are you going to tell me what to call you, or am I going to have to ask Margaret?”

  “You can call me Nurse,” she said.

  “Here I am, in pain, and you won’t even tell me your name?”

  “Lari,” she said. “Lari Matsi.”

  “What is that, Estonian?

  “Estonian? No. Finnish.”

  “I never met a Finn before.”

  “Now you have.”

  “How come Margaret mentioned me?”

  “She knew I worked here, and she called me and said you and Prince Charming were buddies.”

  “How long is that little pill going to take to work?”

  “A couple of minutes. You do know how to work those?” She nodded at the bedpans. “You won’t need a demonstration?”

  “No.”

  “Ring when you’re through,” she said. “They’ll come take them away for you.”

  “They’ll?”

  “I’m a surgical nurse,” Lari said. “I’ve graduated from bedpan handling.”

  “I see. Then we’re just ships passing in the night?”

  “I’ll be back when the doctor, doctors, come to see you.”

  She walked out of the room. The rear view was as attractive as the front.

  Matt picked up one of the bedpans.

  I don’t really want to use that goddamn thing, and I really don’t want to use the other flat one.

  He looked around the room. There were two doors. One of them had to be a bathroom.

  He tried moving his wounded leg. It hurt like hell, but he could raise it.

  I can stagger over there, hopping on one leg. I don’t have to stand on it.

  It proved possible, but considerably more painful than he thought it would be. By the time he had arranged himself on the commode, he was covered with a clammy sweat.

  The telephone began to ring.

  Goddammit! That’s probably Dad. He said he would call when he finally got to the office. Well, I’ll just have to call him back.

  After a long time, it stopped ringing.

  Three minutes later, he pushed open the bathroom door, which took considerably more effort than he thought it would.

  Lari was standing there.

  “I thought you would probably try something stupid like that,” she said. “Put your arm around my shoulders.”

  Using Lari as a crutch, he made his way back to the bed. She watched him get in and then rearranged the thin sheet over him.

  “Does this mean I don’t get a gold star to take home to Mommy?”

  “I’d have gotten you a crutch if you had asked for one,” she said. “If that was uncomfortable, it’s your own fault.”

  “Uncomfortable, certainly, but far more dignified.”

  Finally, he got her to smile. He liked her smile.

  “You should start feeling a little drowsy about now,” she said. “That should help the pain.”

  “I don’t suppose I could interest you in waltzing around the room with me again?”

  “Not right now, thank you,” she said, and smiled again, and left, taking the bedpans with her.

  He lowered the head of the bed, and then shut the television off. He was feeling drowsy, but the leg still hurt.

  The telephone rang again. He picked it up.

  “Dad?”

  “No, not Dad,” Helene’s voice said.

  “Oh. Hi!”

  “That went far more smoothly than one would have thought, didn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s a good thing I didn’t know who he was taking me to see. I just ten minutes ago saw the Bulletin.”

  “I’ve seen it,” he said. “It’s not a very good likeness.”

  “Oh, I think it is. I thought it rather exciting, as a matter of fact. Not as exciting as being in the room with you like that, but exciting.”

  “Jesus!”

  “If I thought there was any way in the world to get away with it, I’d come back. Would you like that?”

  “Under the circumstances, it might not be the smartest thing to do.”

  “‘Faint heart ne’er won fair maiden,’” she quoted.

  Matt was trying to find a reply to that when he realized that she had hung up.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” he said, and put the phone back in its cradle.

  He recalled the pressure of her breast against his arm, and her fingers at the back of his neck. And other things about Helene.

  He looked down at his middle.

  “Well,” he said aloud. “At least that’s not broken.”

  Martha Washington was sitting on the narrow end of the grand piano in the living room looking out the window when she heard the key in the door and knew her husband had come home.

  She looked at her watch, saw that it was a few minutes after three, and then turned to look toward the door. She didn’t get off the piano.

  “Hi!” she called.

  Jason came into the living room pulling off his overcoat. He threw it onto the couch. When it was wet, as it was now, that tended to stain the cream-colored leather, but Martha decided this was not the time to mention that for the five hundredth time.

  “How come I get hell when I set a glass on there, and you can sit on it?” he greeted her en route to the whiskey cabinet.

  “Because I don’t drip on the wood and make stains,” she said.

  He turned from the whiskey cabinet and smiled. That pleased her.

  “How’s Matt?” she asked.

  “Apparently he was lucky; he’s not seriously hurt. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when I went to the hospital this morning it looked like Suburban station at half past five. Even Farnsworth Stillwell—and his wife—were there. I thought I’d have a chance to go back, but I haven’t.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened? That picture of Matt in the paper was horrifying!”

  “From what I have been able to piece together, he wasn’t even supposed to be there, but he showed up when they were getting ready to go, and Wohl sent him with Mickey O’Hara. They were in an alley behind the bastard’s house, waiting for the detectives and the cops to go in, when the sonofabitch showed up in the alley, shooting. He was a lousy shot, fortunately—”

  “He got Matt!”

  “With a ricochet, it hit a brick wall first. If it had hit Matt first, he’d be—a lot worse off.”

  “He was covered with blood in the newspaper.”

  “Minor wound, scratch, really, in the forehead. The head tends to bleed a lot.”

  “The radio said the man died,” Martha said. “Poor Matt.”

  “‘Poor Matt’?”

  “It will bother him, having taken someone’s life.”

  “The last one he shot didn’t bother him that I could see.”

  “That you could see.”

  Jason’s face
wrinkled as he considered that.

  “Touché,” he said, finally.

  “I got him a box of candy. I didn’t know what else to get him.”

  “You could have given him the picture of the naked lady. I know he’d like that.”

  She looked at him a minute, smiled, and said, “Okay. I will.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “You’re not thinking of taking it to the hospital?”

  “Are we going to the hospital?”

  “Yeah. Well, I thought maybe if you took off early and were here when I came home, you might want to go up there with me.”

  “I was about to go without you,” she said. “You didn’t call all day.”

  “I was busy,” he said, and then added, “I found Tony.”

  “Oh?”

  “In a bar in Roxborough. Specifically, in the back of a bar in Roxborough.”

  “Oh, honey!”

  “I was right on the edge of taking him to a hospital. God, he looked awful. But I managed to get him to go home. I put him to bed. I just hope he stays there.”

  “Does Inspector Wohl know?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Well, maybe with all this—”

  “He won’t find out? You underestimate Peter Wohl.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Drunks don’t really reform until they hit bottom. Tony’s pretty close to the bottom. Maybe I should have left him there and let him face Wohl. Maybe that would straighten him out.”

  “You know you couldn’t do that.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  “The picture’s in the spare bedroom.”

  “You really want to take it to the hospital?”

  “If it will make him feel better, why not?”

  When Jason and Martha Washington got off the elevator carrying the oil painting of the naked voluptuous lady, Jason found that Officer Matthew M. Payne had, in addition to the two uniformed cops guarding his door, other visitors, none of whom he was, in the circumstances, pleased to see.

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl were standing in the corridor outside Matt’s room, in conversation with a tall, angular man wearing a tweed jacket, a trench coat, gray flannel slacks, loafers, and the reserved collar affected by members of the clergy.