Final Justice boh-8

by W. E. B Griffin

  That’s what I’ll tell him.

  When all else fails, tell the truth.

  “What did your mother have to say?” Commissioner Coughlin asked.

  “My father went to Washington,” Matt replied. “He’s going to meet Mother in Wilmington, and they’ll spend the night. So I’ll have to wait until they get back to tell them. And I couldn’t get Amy on the phone; she teaches all day on Monday.”

  “Is he still pushing you to go to law school?”

  Here it comes: “Maybe you should think about it, Matt.”

  “With great subtlety and even greater determination.”

  “He means well, Matty,” Coughlin said.

  “I know.”

  “What’s Peter got you working on?” Coughlin asked.

  I’m not supposed to tell you. But on the other hand, you’re Deputy Commissioner Coughlin. You have every right in the world to ask.

  “A cop-on-the-take question. Captain Cassidy, of the Eighteenth, is driving to his new condominium at Atlantic City in his new GMC Yukon XL. He gave his old one-last year’s- to his daughter, who is married to a sergeant in the Eleventh. They also have a condo at the shore.”

  “Peter got it from Internal Affairs?” Coughlin asked.

  “Until just now, I thought he got it from you,” Matt said. “Either you or Chief Lowenstein. He said he wanted answers before Internal Affairs got involved.”

  Chief Inspector Matthew L. Lowenstein was chief of detectives.

  “And have you? Come up with any answers?”

  “Not so far.”

  “What have you got so far?”

  “His major expense is the condo,” Matt said. “The payment on the mortgage-$325,000-is about $2,400 a month. They furnished it from scratch, and the furniture payment is $323 a month. The Yukon-”

  “What’s a Yukon?” Coughlin interrupted.

  “I’m not really sure. What Cassidy has-and the old one, too, that he gave to his daughter-is the big GMC. Until I started this, I thought they called them ’Suburbans.’ ”

  “Okay,” Coughlin said.

  “Anyway, he bought the new Yukon-no trade-in-with no money down, on a four-year note. That’s $683 a month. That’s about-”

  “Thirty-four hundred a month,” Coughlin interrupted. “Which is a large chunk out of a captain’s pay.”

  “His house is paid for,” Matt said. “He lives in Northeast Philly, not far from Chief Wohl.”

  “I know.”

  “He has two kids in school, one in Archbishop Ryan High School and the other in Temple. I don’t know yet what that costs.”

  “It’s not cheap.”

  “On the income side, in the last nine months, his mother, who lived with him, died. And so did a brother. An unmarried brother, in Easton. There was some insurance-I’m working on how much-and some property. I’m working on that.”

  “Gut feeling?”

  “I don’t think he’s on the take,” Matt said. “Not the type.”

  “You think you can tell by looking, do you, Matty?”

  “The Black Buddha told me that just because you can’t take your gut feeling to court, doesn’t mean you should ignore it,” Matt said.

  “You better get out of the habit of calling him that, if you’re going to Homicide.”

  “It doesn’t make him mad,” Matt argued. “He told me that Buddha was a very wise man, and ‘God knows, I’m black.’ ”

  Coughlin chuckled.

  “Have you thought what Lieutenant Washington is going to think if you go to Homicide?”

  That’s two “if you’re going to Homicide”s. Come on, Uncle Denny. Get the speech over with.

  “Sure,” Matt said.

  “Aside from the fact that Captain Patrick Cassidy is an affable Irishman who is good to his wife and daughter, and probably has a dog named Spot, why aren’t you made suspicious by his sudden new affluence?”

  “There could be a number of explanations for it.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “He cared for his mother for years. She could have left him money. Or the brother. Even if they didn’t, I can hear his wife saying, ‘Okay, that’s over. Your mother’s gone. I want a place at the shore.’ ”

  “Even if they can’t afford it?”

  “I hope to find out they can,” Matt said. “I was going to go to Easton today to check the brother’s will.”

  “Was?”

  “Here I am, at your orders,” Matt said.

  “We won’t be at the Roy Rogers long,” Coughlin said. “I just wanted a look around after the crime scene people did their business. I thought you might want to have a look, since you may go to Homicide.”

  That’s two “if”s and a “may.” Where’s the speech?

  “I would. Thank you.”

  They rode in silence for a minute or two, and there was no speech, which both surprised and worried Matt.

  There has to be a hook in the two “if”s and a “may.”

  What’s he done? Had a word with the commissioner, who will call me in and say that while I’m certainly entitled to go to Homicide, “the department has a real problem. They really need a sergeant with your experience in the Special Victims Unit and you’ll certainly understand that the needs of the department are paramount, and I give you my word that you’ll get to Homicide one day.”

  If that’s what he’s done, he certainly won’t tell me.

  Shit!

  “Who were they talking about when I walked in?” Matt asked.

  “Who’s who?”

  “The ‘bastard’ Frank Hollaran said he’d really like to see in shackles, that Mike Sabara wants to personally strap in the electric chair.”

  “Isaac ‘Fort’ Festung. The sonofabitch keeps sending Pekach postcards.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You really don’t know?” Coughlin asked, his surprise evident in his voice.

  “No, I don’t,” Matt confessed. “The name sounds familiar… but no, I really don’t know. What did he do?”

  “How old are you, Matty?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “I guess that’s why you never heard of him. When you were seven years old-no, six; she was in the trunk for a year-Fort Festung beat his girlfriend to death, stuffed her body in a trunk, and put the trunk in a closet. When they finally found her, her body was mummified.”

  “Jesus! And he sends Dave Pekach postcards from prison?” Matt asked, and then, remembering, added, “I thought Dave said from France.”

  “He did,” Coughlin said. “Festung never went to prison. After Dave got a search warrant, found the body, and arrested him, his lawyer, now our beloved Senator Feldman, got him released at his arraignment on forty thousand dollars bail, and he jumped it.”

  “He was charged with murder and got out on bail?” Matt asked, incredulously.

  “Yeah, that’s just what he did,” Coughlin said, “and he’s been on the run ever since. A couple of months ago, they found him in France.”

  “And now he’ll be extradited and tried?”

  “He’s already been tried. The only in absentia trial I ever heard about. The jury found him guilty, and Eileen Solomon sentenced him to life without possibility of parole.”

  “The D.A.?” Matt asked, surprised.

  The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon had just been reelected as district attorney of Philadelphia, taking sixty-seven percent of the votes cast.

  “Before she was D.A., she was a judge,” Coughlin said. “And no, Matty, it doesn’t look as if he’ll be extradited. He’s got the French government in his pocket. And knows it. And likes to rub it in our faces, especially Dave Pekach’s. That’s what the postcard was all about. He’s still thumbing his nose at the system.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Matt said.

  “Get the case out and read it. It’s interesting,” Coughlin said, and then, nodding out the windshield, “I wonder if they’re just slow, or they got something.”

  Matt followed his glance
. The crime scene van was parked on Snyder Street, fifty yards past the Roy Rogers restaurant.

  “I think there’s a place to park right in front of the van,” Coughlin said. “You can drop me here.”

  “You want me to come in?” Matt asked, as he pulled to the curb.

  “That’s the idea,” Coughlin said, as he got out of the car. “If you’re going to Homicide, you might find this educational.”

  That’s three “if”s and a “may.”

  Matt had to show his badge to the uniform standing outside to get past him into the Roy Rogers, and then was surprised to find Coughlin waiting for him just inside the door.

  The restaurant was empty except for a man Matt guessed was the manager, sitting with a cup of coffee at one of the banquettes near the door, and a forensic technician trying to find-or maybe lift-prints from a banquette at the rear of the restaurant, by the kitchen door.

  And then the kitchen door opened, and Detective Tony Harris came through it, and saw Coughlin. He walked up to him.

  “Commissioner,” he said.

  “Tony,” Coughlin said, as they shook hands. Then Coughlin asked, “They found something?”

  “Jason didn’t think they found enough,” Harris said. “That’s why he sent them back.”

  “The famous Jason Washington’s ‘never leave a stone unturned’ philosophy?”

  “Never leave the stones under the stone unturned,” Harris said.

  “Can you walk it through for me, Tony? Bright Eyes here just might learn something.”

  “Sure,” Harris said. “Two doers. They came through that door. Two young black guys, one of them fat. They-I got this primarily from a guy who works here-took a look around, then the fat one walked to the last booth on the left and sat down, and the other one sat in the first booth-where you are, Matt. My eyewitness, who was mopping the floor by the door, ducked into the kitchen. He looked out, saw the fat guy take a revolver-wrapped in newspaper-from his jacket, and told the kitchen supervisor. She called 911.

  “The next thing my eyewitness knew, there was a shot.” Harris pointed to the ceiling above where Matt was standing. “We recovered the bullet. Full jacket. 38. If we can find the gun, we can most likely get a good match. Then the fat doer went into the kitchen….”

  “Let’s have a look,” Coughlin said.

  “Yes, sir,” Harris said, and led them through the restaurant to the kitchen doors.

  “We have a bunch of prints from both sides of the doors,” Harris said. “All the employees had been fingerprinted, so we’re running the ones we lifted against those.”

  He pushed the door open.

  “My eyewitness was behind the door, with his back against the wall,” Harris said. “He saw the fat doer grab the telephone, listen a moment-presumably long enough to hear she was talking to Police Radio-rip the phone from the wall, call her an obscene name, hold his revolver at arm’s length, and shoot her. She slid down the wall, and then fell forward.”

  He pointed to the chalked outline of a body on the floor, and to blood smeared on the wall.

  “Then the fat doer herded everybody but my eyewitness, who he didn’t see, into the cooler, and jammed a sharpening steel into the padlock loops.”

  He pointed to the cooler door, then went on. “Then he went back into the restaurant, not seeing my eyewitness, and started to take wallets, et cetera, from the citizens. Doer Number One, meanwhile, is taking money from the cash register.

  “Right about then, Kenny Charlton came through the door. Doer Number One is crouched behind the cashier’s counter. Kenny saw him, the doer jumps up, wraps his arm around Kenny, wrestles with him. The fat doer then runs up, sticks his gun under Kenny’s bulletproof vest, and fires. Kenny goes down. Doer Number One steps over Kenny’s body, takes two shots at it, and then follows Doer Number Two out the door and down Snyder. Mickey O’Hara got their picture, but it’s a lousy picture. No fault of Mickey’s.”

  “Why did the fat doer stick his gun under Charlton’s vest?” Matt asked. “Why not just shoot him in the head? Or the lower back, below the vest?”

  Coughlin gave him a look Matt could not interpret, and finally decided it was exasperation at his having asked a question that obviously could not be answered.

  Tony Harris held up both hands in a helpless gesture.

  The restaurant manager walked up to them with three mugs of coffee on a tray.

  “I thought you and the other detectives might like…”

  “That’s very nice of you,” Coughlin said.

  “Mr. Benetti, this is Commissioner Coughlin,” Harris said.

  “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry…”

  “I like to think I’m still a detective,” Coughlin said. “No offense taken.”

  “I… uh… don’t know how to say this,” Benetti said. “But I’m glad to see you here, Commissioner. I would hate to have what those animals did to Mrs. Fernandez and Officer Charlton… wind up as an unsolved crime.”

  “We’re going to try very hard, Mr. Benetti, to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Coughlin said.

  Benetti looked at Coughlin, then put out his hand.

  “Thank you,” he said, and walked away.

  Coughlin looked over his shoulder, then pointed to one of the banquettes. He slid in one side, and Tony Harris and Matt into the other.

  “Still no idea who these animals are?” Coughlin asked.

  Harris shook his head, “no.”

  “The police artist’s stuff is just about useless,” Harris said. “Everybody saw somebody else. We’re going to have to have a tip, or make them with a fingerprint.”

  Coughlin shook his head.

  “One question, Tony. I want the answer off the top of your head. How would you feel about having Sergeant Payne in Homicide?”

  Harris chuckled, then smiled.

  “I heard The List was out,” he said. “Good for you, Matt!”

  “That doesn’t answer my question, Tony,” Coughlin said.

  “Welcome, welcome!” Tony said.

  “I should have known better than to try that,” Coughlin said. “In law school, they teach you never to ask a question to somebody on the stand unless you know what the answer’s going to be.”

  “Commissioner, you asked,” Harris said. “What’s wrong with Matt coming to Homicide?”

  “He’s too young, for one thing. He hasn’t been on the job long enough, for another. I can go on.”

  “He’s also smart,” Harris said. “And he’s a stone-under-the — stone turner. I didn’t wonder why this bastard didn’t shoot Kenny in the head, or lower back. Matt already thinks like the Black Buddha. The other stuff, we can teach him.”

  Coughlin snorted.

  “And he’s going to make a good witness on the stand,” Harris said. “Think about that.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Coughlin said. “For a moment, I thought- I guess, to be honest, hoped-you were pulling my leg. But you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Tony Harris nodded his head. “I thought you’d be all for him coming to Homicide,” he said.

  Coughlin looked between the two of them but didn’t respond directly.

  After a moment, he asked, “Are you about finished here, Tony?”

  “Just about.”

  “I need a ride to the Roundhouse.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Matt’s going to Easton on a job I gave Peter Wohl and Peter gave to Matt,” Coughlin said. “And he’d better get going.”

  “What job’s that?” Harris asked.

  “One of those I’d rather not talk about,” Coughlin said, looking at Matt. “But the sooner you know something, Matt, the better.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “You sore at me, Matt?” Coughlin said.

  “I could never be sore at you,” Matt said.

  Coughlin met his eyes and then nodded.

  Then he pushed himself out of the banquette.

  Matt started to head for the Schuylkill Expressw
ay as the fastest way out of town. When he turned onto South Street, he punched the autodial button on his cellular, which caused Inspector Wohl to answer his cellular on the second ring.

  “Matt, boss. Commissioner Coughlin’s on his way back to the Roundhouse, and I’m on my way to Easton. Okay?”

  “From the cheerful sound of your voice, I guess you again refused to listen to his sage advice?”

  “He didn’t offer any,” Matt said. “He tried to sandbag me with Tony Harris.”

  “And?”

  “Tony said I already think like the Black Buddha, they can teach me what I have to know, and ‘welcome’-no, ‘welcome, welcome’-to Homicide.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “He also told me he gave you the Cassidy job,” Matt said.

  Again there was a perceptible pause.

  “If you come up with something unpleasant, give me a call,” Wohl said. “Otherwise fill me in in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  Wohl broke the connection without saying anything else.

  At the next intersection-South and Twentieth Streets- Matt changed his mind about the Schuylkill Expressway and instead drove back to Rittenhouse Square, where he drove into the underground garage, parked the unmarked Ford, and got in the Porsche.

  It had occurred to him that he hadn’t driven the Porsche much lately, and it needed a run. What he liked best about the Porsche-something he somewhat snobbishly thought most people didn’t understand-was not how easily you could get it up to well over 100, 120 miles per hour-a great many cars would do that-but how beautifully it handled on narrow, winding roads, making 60 or 70 where lesser cars would lose control at 50 or less. Such as the twenty miles or so of Route 611 between Kintnersville and Easton, where the road ran alongside the old Delaware Canal.

  With the winding road, and a lot else on his mind-

  God, that was an unexpected compliment from Tony Harris, me thinking like Jason…

  And it couldn’t have been timed better. Uncle Denny had egg all over his face…

  I wonder when the promotion will actually happen?

  What am I going to do if Captain Cassidy’s brother’s will hasn’t been filed in the courthouse? Some people don’t even have wills. What do they call that, intestate, something like that?

  With a little luck, the courthouse’ll have a computer and I can do a search for all real estate in the name of John Paul Cassidy…