The Witness

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What are we having?”

  “A nice piece of chicken,” she said. “Primarily.”

  She took the gray cover off a plate with a flourish.

  “And steamed veggies.”

  “Wow!” Matt said enthusiastically. “And what do you suppose that gray stuff in the cup is?”

  “Custard.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Five minutes later, as he was trying to scrape the custard off his teeth and the roof of his mouth with his tongue, the door opened again.

  A familiar face, to which Matt could not instantly attach a name, appeared.

  “Feel up to a couple of visitors?”

  “Sure, come on in.”

  Walter Davis, special agent in charge, Philadelphia Office, FBI, came into the room, trailed by A-SAC (Criminal Affairs) Frank Young.

  “We won’t stay long, but we wanted to come by and see if there was anything we could do for you,” Davis said as Matt finally realized who they were.

  You could tell me you just arrested the guy who wants to get me for shooting Charles D. Stevens. That would be nice.

  What the hell are they doing here? What do they want?

  Mr. Albert J. Monahan was talking with Mr. Phil Katz when Sergeant Jason Washington came through the door of Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc., on South Street. Mr. Monahan smiled and seemed pleased to see Sergeant Washington. Mr. Katz did not.

  “Good evening,” Washington said.

  “How are you, Detective Washington?” Mr. Monahan replied, pumping his hand.

  Mr. Katz nodded.

  “I guess you heard—” Washington began.

  “We heard,” Katz said.

  “—we have the people who were here locked up,” Washington continued. “And I hope Detective Pelosi called to tell you I was coming by?”

  “Yes, he did,” Monahan said.

  “What I thought you meant,” Katz said, “was, had we heard about what the Islamic Liberation Army had to say about people ‘bearing false witness.’”

  “We really don’t think they’re an army, Mr. Katz.”

  Katz snorted.

  “Do what you think you have to, Albert,” Mr. Katz said, and walked away.

  “He’s a married man, with kids,” Al Monahan said, “I understand how he feels.”

  “Are you about ready, Mr. Monahan?” Washington asked.

  “I’ve just got to get my coat and hat,” Monahan replied. “And then I’ll be with you.”

  Washington watched him walk across the floor toward the rear of the store, and then went to the door and looked out.

  Things were exactly as he had set them up. He questioned whether it was really necessary, but Peter Wohl had told him to ‘err on the side of caution’ and Washington was willing to go along with his concern, not only because, obviously, Wohl was his commanding officer, but also because of all the police brass Washington knew well, Peter Wohl was among the least excitable. He did not, in other words, as Washington thought of it, run around in circles chasing his tail, in the manner of other supervisors of his acquaintance when they were faced with an out-of-the-ordinary situation.

  There were three cars parked in front of Goldblatt’s. First was the Highway car, then Washington’s unmarked car, and finally the unmarked car that carried the two plainclothes officers.

  Both Highway cops, one of the plainclothesmen, and the 6th District beat cop were standing by the fender of Washington’s car.

  “Okay,” Mr. Monahan said in Washington’s ear, startling him a little.

  Washington smiled at him, and led him to the door.

  When they stepped outside, one of the Highway cops and the plainclothesmen stepped beside Mr. Monahan. As Washington got behind the wheel of his car, they walked Monahan between the Highway car and Washington’s, and installed him in the front seat.

  The beat cop, as the Highway cop and the plainclothesmen got in their cars, stepped into the middle of the street and held up his hand, blocking traffic coming east on South Street, so that the three cars could pull away from the curb together.

  The Highway car in front of Washington had almost reached South 8th Street and had already turned on his turn signal when Washington saw something dropping out of the sky.

  He had just time to recognize it as a bottle, whiskey or ginger ale, that big, then as a bottle on fire, at the neck, when it hit the roof of the Highway car and then bounced off, unbroken, onto South Street, where it shattered.

  The Highway car slammed on his brakes, and Washington almost ran into him. As he jammed his hand on the horn, the unmarked car behind him slammed into his bumper.

  Washington signaled furiously for the Highway car to get moving. It began to move again the instant there was a sound like a blown-up paper bag being ruptured, and then a puff of orange flame.

  Those dirty rotten sonsofbitches!

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Mr. Monahan said.

  Washington’s hand found his microphone.

  “Keep moving!” he ordered. “The beat cop’ll call it in. Go to the Roundhouse.”

  Washington looked in his mirror. The unmarked car behind him was still moving, already through the puddle of burning gasoline.

  “What the hell was it, a fucking Molotov cocktail?” an incredulous voice, probably, Washington thought, one of the Highway guys, came over the radio.

  “Can you see, Mr. Monahan, if the car behind us is all right?” he asked.

  “It looks okay.”

  Washington picked up the microphone again.

  “Okay. Everything’s under control,” he said.

  In a porcine rectum, he thought, everything’s under control. What the hell is going on here? This is Philadelphia, not Saigon!

  SEVENTEEN

  The tall, trim, simply dressed woman who looked a good deal younger than her years stood for a moment in the door to the lounge of the Union League Club, running her eyes over the people in the room, now crowded with the after-work-before-catching-the-train crowd.

  Finally, with a small, triumphant smile, she pointed her finger at a table across the room against the wall.

  “There,” she announced to her companion.

  “I see them,” he replied.

  She walked to the table, with her companion trailing behind her, and announced her presence by reaching down and picking a squat whiskey glass up from the table.

  “I really hope this is not one of those times when you’re drinking something chic,” she said, taking a healthy swallow.

  Mr. Brewster Cortland Payne, who had just set the drink (his third) down after taking a first sip, looked up at his wife and, smiling, got to his feet.

  Patricia Payne sat down in one of the heavy wooden chairs.

  “I needed that,” she said. “Denny has been trying to convince me, with not much success, that we don’t have anything to worry about. Has Inspector Wohl been more successful than he has?”

  “I hope so,” Peter Wohl said. “Good evening, Mrs. Payne. Chief.”

  “Peter,” Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. “Brewster.”

  Brewster C. Payne raised his hand, index finger extended, above his shoulders. The gesture was unnecessary, for a white-jacketed waiter, who provided service based on his own assessment of who really mattered around the place, now that they were letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in, was already headed for the table.

  “Mrs. Payne, what can I get for you?”

  “You can get Mr. Payne whatever he was drinking, thank you, Homer,” she said. “I just stole his.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the waiter said with a broad smile. “And you, sir?”

  “The same please,” Coughlin said.

  “To answer your question, Pat,” Brewster C. Payne said, “Yes. Peter has been very reassuring.”

  “Did he reassure you before or after you heard about the Molotov cocktail?” Patricia Payne asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was in the
bar of the Bellevue-Stratford, being reassured by Denny,” she said, “when Tom Lenihan came running in and said, if I quote him accurately, ‘Jesus Christ, Chief, you’re not going to believe this. They just threw a Molotov cocktail at the cars guarding Monahan.’”

  “My God!” Payne said.

  “At that point, I thought I had better get myself reassured by you, darling, so I called the office and they said you had come here. So Denny brought me. So how was your day?”

  Both Wohl and Payne looked at Chief Coughlin, and both shared the same thought, that they had never seen Coughlin looking quite so unhappy.

  “Oh, Denny, I’m sorry,” Patricia Payne said, laying her hand on his. “That sounded as if I don’t trust you, or am blaming you. I didn’t mean that!”

  “From what I know now,” Coughlin said, “what happened was that when Washington picked up Monahan at Goldblatt’s to take him to the Roundhouse, somebody tossed a bottle full of gasoline down from a roof, or out of a window. It bounced off the Highway car, broke when it hit the street, and then caught fire.”

  “Anyone hurt?” Wohl asked.

  “No. The burning gas flowed under a car on South Street and set it on fire.”

  “Monahan?”

  “I got Washington on the radio. He said Monahan was riding with him. They were behind the Highway car, and one of your unmarked cars was behind them. Monahan is all right. He’s at the Roundhouse right now. The lineups at the Detention Center will go on as scheduled, as soon as they finish at the Roundhouse.”

  “What are they doing over there?” Wohl asked.

  “I suppose Washington thought that was the best place to go; Central Detectives will want to get some statements, put it all together. And the lab probably wants a look at the Highway car they hit with the bottle. Maybe pick up another car or two to escort them to the Detention Center.”

  If you were thinking clearly, Peter Wohl, you would not have had to ask that dumb question.

  “I think I’d better get over there,” Wohl said.

  Coughlin nodded.

  “Peter, I called Mike Sabara and told him I thought it would be a good idea if he sent a Highway car over to Frankford Hospital. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  “Thank you. That saves me making a phone call,” Wohl said. He got to his feet. “Mrs. Payne,” he began, and then couldn’t think of what to say next.

  She looked up at him and smiled.

  “Peter—you don’t mind if I call you Peter?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Peter, as I walked over here with Denny, I thought that I couldn’t ask for anyone better than you and Denny to look out for Matt.”

  “Absolutely,” Brewster C. Payne agreed.

  “Patty, we’ll take care of Matt, don’t you worry about that,” Denny Coughlin said emotionally.

  “Sit down, Peter,” Brewster C. Payne said, “and finish your drink. I’m sure that everything that should be done has been done.”

  “He’s right. Sit down, Peter,” Chief Coughlin chimed in. “Right now, both of us would be in the way at the Roundhouse.”

  Wohl looked at both of the men, and then at Patricia Payne, and then sat down.

  The Police Department records concerning Captain David R. Pekach stated that he was a bachelor, who lived in a Park Drive Manor apartment. Captain Pekach had last spent the night in his apartment approximately five months before, that is to say four days after he had made the acquaintance of Miss Martha Peebles, who resided in a turn-of-the-century mansion set on five acres at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

  Miss Peebles, who had a certain influence in Philadelphia (according to Business Week magazine, her father had owned outright 11.7 percent of the anthracite coal reserves of the United States, among other holdings, all of which he had left to his sole and beloved daughter), had been burglarized several times.

  When the police had not only been unable to apprehend the burglar, but also to prevent additional burglaries, she had complained to her legal adviser (and lifelong friend of her father) Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester.

  Mr. Payne had had a word with the other founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, who handled the criminal side of their practice. Colonel Mawson had had a word with Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich about Miss Peebles’s problem, and Commissioner Czernich, fully aware that unless Mawson got satisfaction from him, the next call the sonofabitch would make would be to Mayor Carlucci, told him to put the problem from his mind, he personally would take care of it.

  Commissioner Czernich had then called Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, and told him he didn’t care how he did it, he didn’t want to hear of one more incident of any kind at the residence of Miss Martha Peebles, 606 Glengarry Lane, Chestnut Hill.

  Staff Inspector Wohl, in turn, turned the problem over to Captain Pekach, using essentially the same phraseology Commissioner Czernich had used when he had called.

  Working with Inspector Wohl’s deputy, Captain Mike Sabara, Captain Pekach had arranged for Miss Peebles’s residence to be placed under surveillance. An unmarked Special Operations car would be parked on Glengarry Lane until the burglar was nabbed, and Highway RPCs would drive past no less than once an hour.

  Captain Pekach had then presented himself personally at the Peebles residence, to assure the lady that the Philadelphia Police Department generally and Captain David Pekach personally were doing all that was humanly possible to shield her home from future violations of any kind.

  In the course of their conversation, Miss Peebles had said that it wasn’t the loss of what already had been stolen, essentially bric-a-brac, that concerned her, but rather the potential theft of her late father’s collection of Early American firearms.

  Captain Pekach, whose hobby happened to be Early American firearms, asked if he might see the collection. Miss Peebles obliged him.

  As she passed him a rather interesting piece, a mint condition U.S. Rifle, model of 1819 with a J.H. Hall action, stamped with the initials of the proving inspector, Zachary Ellsworth Hampden, Captain, Ordnance Corps, later Deputy Chief of Ordnance, their hands touched.

  Shortly afterward, Miss Peebles, who was thirty-six, willingly offered her heretofore zealously guarded pearl of great price to Captain Pekach, who was also thirty-six, who took it with what Miss Peebles regarded as exquisite tenderness, and convincing her that she had at last found what had so far eluded her, a true gentleman to share life’s joys and sorrows.

  And so it was that when Captain David Pekach, after first having personally checked to see that there was a Highway RPC parked outside Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc., on South Street, under orders to obey whatever orders Sergeant Jason Washington might issue, left his office at Bustleton and Bowler for the day, he did not head for his official home of record, but rather for 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

  When he approached the house, he reached up to the sun visor and pushed the button that caused the left of the double steel gates to the estate to swing open. Three hundred yards up the cobblestone drive, he stopped his official, unmarked car under the two-car-wide portico to the left of the house and got out. There was a year-old Mercedes roadster, now wearing its steel winter top, in the other lane, pointing down the driveway.

  Evans, the elderly, white-haired black butler (who, with his wife had been in the house when Miss Martha had been born, and when both of her parents had died), came out of the house.

  “Good evening, Captain,” he said. “I believe Miss Martha’s upstairs.”

  “Thank you,” Pekach said.

  As Pekach went into the house, Evans got behind the wheel of the unmarked car and drove it to the four-car garage, once a stable, a hundred yards from the house.

  There was a downstairs sitting room in the house, and an upstairs sitting room. Martha had gotten into the habit of greeting him upstairs with a dri
nk, and some hors d’oeuvres in the upstairs sitting room.

  He would have a drink, or sometimes two, and then he would take a shower. Sometimes he would dress after his shower, and they would have another drink and watch the news on television, and then go for dinner, either out or here in the house. And sometimes he would have his shower and he would not get dressed, because Martha had somehow let him know that she would really rather fool around than watch the news on television.

  Tonight, obviously, there would be no fooling around. At least not now, if probably later. Martha, when she greeted him with a glass dark with Old Bushmill’s and a kiss that was at once decorous and exciting, was dressed to go out. She had on a simple black dress, a double string of pearls, each the size of a pencil eraser, and a diamond and ruby pin in the shape of a pheasant.

  “Precious,” she said, “I asked Evans to lay out your blazer and gray slacks. I thought you would want to look more or less official, but we’re going out for dinner, and I know you don’t like to do that in uniform, and the blazer-with-the-police-buttons seemed to be a nice compromise. All right?”

  He had called Martha early in the morning, to tell her that Matt Payne, thank God, was not seriously injured. He knew that she would have heard of the shooting, and would be concerned on two levels, first that it was a cop with whom he worked, and second, perhaps more important, that Matt was the son of her lawyer. He told her that he would be a little late getting home; he wanted to put in an appearance at Frankford Hospital.

  “I’d like to go too, if that would be all right,” she said.

  He had hesitated. He could think of no good reason why she should not go to see Payne. After all, Payne’s father was her lawyer, and they probably more or less knew each other, but he suspected that Martha was at least as interested in appearing as Dave Pekach’s very good lady friend as she was in offering her sympathy to Matt Payne.

  He had tried from the beginning, and so far successfully, to keep Martha away from his brother officers. Every sonofabitch and his brother in the Police Department seemed to think his relationship with the rich old maid from Chestnut Hill was as funny as a rubber crutch.