The Witness boh-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  Matt looked at him with curiosity in his eyes, but did not ask.

  "Two days after Wohl shanghaied me to Special Operations," Washington explained, "I put my name in. I almost didn't take it. I never cracked a book."

  "But you came in third," Matt said.

  "As I said, Officer Payne, you may now call me 'sir.'"

  "Well, I think this is splendid!"

  Spoken like a true Main Line WASP. "Splendid."

  "Splendid?" Washington asked dryly.

  "I think so."

  "Thank you, Matt," Washington said.

  "So what happens to you now? Will they transfer you?"

  "I devoutly hope so," Washington said. "Back to Homicide."

  "I'd hate to see you go."

  Now that I think about it, I'm not so sure I want to go back to Homicide. Not as a sergeant.

  "I don't think Peter Wohl will let me go anywhere until we catch the cop killer," Washington said.

  "Is that the way that works? It's up to the inspector?"

  "No. The way it works is that assignments of newly promoted people are made by Personnel. They evaluate the individual in terms of vacancies, his future career, and the good of the Department. After a good deal of thought and paper-pushing, they reach a decision, and the promotee-is that right, 'promotee'?"

  "Why not?" Matt chuckled.

  "-thepromotee gets his new assignment. Providing of course, that certain members of the hierarchy, Denny Coughlin, for example, and Matt Lowenstein, people like that, and, of course, our own beloved commander, P. Wohl, agree. If they don't like the promotee's assignment, they somehow manage to get it changed to one they do like. The operative words are 'for the good of the Department.'"

  "I think I understand," Matt said.

  There was the sound of a key in the door. Jason Washington started toward it, but it opened before he could reach it.

  It was a very tall, sharply featured woman, her hair drawn tight against an angular skull.

  She looks, Matt thought, like one of the Egyptian bas-reliefs in the museum.

  Martha (Mrs. Jason) Washington, wearing a flowing pale green dress, stepped into the apartment. Behind her was the doorman, carrying a very large framed picture, wrapped in kraft paper.

  "Take that from him, please," she ordered.

  Washington put his hand in his pocket, gave the doorman a couple of dollar bills, and relieved him of the picture.

  "Hello, Matt," Martha Washington said.

  "Good evening," Matt said.

  "What's this?" Jason asked.

  "I thought you could tell from the shape," she said. "It's a bathtub."

  Jason Washington tore the kraft paper away. It was a turn-of-thecentury oil painting of a voluptuous nude, reclining on her side.

  "Finally, some art I can understand and appreciate," Washington said.

  "Inspector Wohl's got one almost just like that," Matt said.

  "That figures," Martha said. "That's to sell, Jason, not for you to ogle; don't get attached to it. I found it in one of those terribly chic places off South Street. I think he needed the money to pay the rent. I bought it right, and I think I know just where to get rid of it."

  "Well,I like it," Matt said. "How much do you want for it?"

  "You're too young," she said. "And besides, it would enrage your liberated female girlfriends."

  "Yeah," Matt said, considering that. The prospect seemed to please him.

  She seemed to see his whiskey glass for the first time.

  "Are we celebrating something?" she asked.

  "Yes, indeed," Matt said.

  "Good evening, Matthew," Jason Washington said. "Nice of you to drop by."

  "Just what's going on here?"

  "Good night, Mrs. Washington," Matt said.

  "Jason?" Mrs. Washington asked. There was a hint of threat in her voice.

  "I took the sergeant's exam," Jason said.

  "Well, it's about damned time," she said. "And you think you passed? Is that what you're celebrating?"

  "Not exactly," Matt heard Jason Washington say as he pulled the door closed after him.

  EIGHT

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein lived in a row house on Tyson Avenue, just off Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia, with his wife, Sarah, and their only child, Samuel Lowenstein, who was fifteen.

  It was the only home they had ever had. The down payment had been a wedding gift from Sarah's parents. The Lowensteins had been married three weeks after Matt, with three years on the job, had been promoted to detective. His first assignment as a detective had been to Northeast Detectives, not far away at Harbison and Levick Streets.

  Sarah, at the time of her marriage, had been employed as a librarian at the Fox Chase Branch of the Philadelphia Public Library. Shortly afterward, she had become librarian at Northeast High School, at Cottman and Algon, and had held that job, with the exception of the three years she had taken off to have their son, ever since.

  Sarah was active in women's affairs of Temple Sholom, a reformed congregation at Large Street and Roosevelt Boulevard, but had long since given up hope of getting Matt to take a more active role in the affairs of the synagogue.

  While what Matt said-that he did not have an eight-to-five, five-daya-week job, but was on call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, and thus could really not get involved like somebody who had a regular job-was true, Sarah suspected that if he did have a regular job, he would have found another excuse not to get involved.

  There was absolutely no pressure from Rabbi Stephen Kuntz, who had replaced the retiring Rabbi Schneider just before Samuel was born, for Matt to take a greater role in the affairs of the congregation, which, in the beginning, had surprised Sarah, for Matt and the new young rabbi had quickly become close. And then she came to understand thatwas the reason.

  The rabbi had a surfeit of homes offering him sumptuous meals on tables set with silver and the good china, with everyone on their good behavior, listening with polite attention as he discoursed on the moral issues of the day. Her home, she was sure, was the only home in the rabbi's congregation where he was greeted by the man of the house calling out, "Lock up the booze, the rabbi's here."

  She didn't think the rabbi sat with his tie pulled down and his shoes off in anyone else's basement, sucking beer from the bottleneck watching the fights on TV, or arguing politics loudly, or laughing deep in his belly at Lowenstein's recounting of the most recent ribald story of theSchwartzes or the Irishers or the wops in the Roundhouse.

  The rabbi needed a respite from the piety of the congregation, and Matt gave it to him. That was a contribution to the congregation, too, more important, Sarah had come to understand, than having Matt serve on the Building Committee or whatever.

  And it worked the other way too. When Matt had been a lieutenant in the 16^th District, and had to shoot a poor, crazy hillbilly woman who had already used a shotgun to kill her husband and was about to kill a cop with it, and was as distraught as Sarah had ever seen him, Rabbi Steve had gone off with him and Denny Coughlin to the Jersey shore for four days.

  All three of them had bad breath and bloodshot eyes when they came back, but the terrible look was gone from Matt's eyes and that was all, Sarah thought, that really mattered.

  Rabbi Kuntz had "dropped by" ten minutes before Lowenstein came home, fifteen minutes late, to announce that he had run into Mickey O'Hara and invited him and his girlfriend for supper.

  "You could have called," Sarah said. "They have telephones all over. What time's he coming?"

  "They.He's bringing his girlfriend. I told him half past six."

  "If I had a little warning, I could have made a roast or something. Now I don't know what I'm going to do."

  "Go to the deli," Lowenstein said, grinning at Kuntz. "Mickey's a smart Irisher. He likes Jew food."

  "You're terrible," Sarah said. "You think that would be all right?"

  "Of course it would," Lowenstein said. "Get cold cuts and hot potato sal
ad."

  "Well, all right, I suppose."

  "You really like that coffee, or would you rather have a beer? Or a drink?"

  "I think I'll finish the coffee and go," the rabbi said.

  "Don't be silly. Mickey's always good for a laugh. You look like you could use one."

  "I'd be in the way."

  "Beer or booze?"

  "Beer, please."

  "Don't be polite. I'm going to have a stiff drink. It's been a bad day."

  "Beer anyway."

  "Samuel's not home yet, so don't go in the basement," Sarah said as she took her coat off a hook by the rear door. "You wouldn't hear the doorbell."

  "Where is he?"

  "He called and said he would be studying with the Rosen girl, Natalie."

  "That's what they call that now, 'studying'?"

  "He must have had a bad day, Rabbi, excuse him, please," Sarah said, and went out the door.

  "A bad bad day?" Kuntz asked. "Or an ordinary, run-of-the-mill bad day?"

  Lowenstein took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and handed it to Kuntz, and then made himself a stiff Scotch, with very little ice or water, before replying.

  "Maybe in the middle of that," Lowenstein said, raising his drink and adding "Mazeltov."

  "Mazeltov,"the rabbi replied.

  "I spent a painful hour and a half-closer to two, really-before lunch with the commissioner and the mayor," Lowenstein said. "Most of it strained silence, which is actually worse than an exhibition of his famous Neapolitan temper."

  "What about?"

  "That young Italian cop who got himself shot down by Temple University. You know what I'm talking about?"

  Kuntz nodded. "It's been in the papers."

  "Has it really?" Lowenstein said bitterly. "There was another editorial in today'sLedger, you see that one?"

  Kuntz nodded.

  "We have no idea who shot him or why," Lowenstein said. "Not even a hunch. And the mayor, who is angry at several levels, first, giving him the benefit of the doubt, as a cop, and then as an Italian, and then, obviously, as a politician, getting the flack from the newspapers, and not only theLedger, is really angry. Frustrated, maybe, is the better word."

  "Which makes him angry."

  "Yeah."

  "And he's holding you responsible?"

  "He took the job away from me-technically away from Homicide, but it' s the same thing-and gave it to Special Operations. I think he now regrets that."

  "Special Operations isn't up to the job?"

  "You know Peter Wohl? Runs Special Operations?"

  Kuntz shook his head no.

  "Very sharp cop. His father is a retired chief, an old pal of mine. Peter was a sergeant in Homicide. He was the youngest captain in the Department, and is now the youngest staff inspector. Just before Carlucci gave him Special Operations, he put Judge Findermann away."

  "I remember that," Kuntz said. "So why can't he find the people who did this?"

  "For the same reason I couldn't; there's simply nothing out there to find."

  "But wouldn't you have more resources in the Detective Division? More experienced people?"

  "Wohl took the two best homicide detectives away from Homicide, with the mayor's blessing," Lowenstein said. "And I passed the word that anything else he wants from the Detective Division, he can have. The way it works is that if you don't get anything at the scene of the crime, then you start ringing doorbells and asking questions. Wohl's people have run out of doorbells to ring and people to question. Hell, there's a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward out-Nesfoods International put it up-and we haven't gotten a damned thing out of that, either."

  "And the mayor knows all of this?"

  "Sure. And I think one of the reasons he's so upset is that he knows he couldn't do any better himself. But that doesn't get the newspapers off his back. I had a very unkind thought in there this morning: The only reason Carlucci isn't throwing Peter Wohl to the wolves-"

  "This man Wohl was there?"

  "Yeah. Wohl and Denny Coughlin too. As I was saying, the only reason he hasn't already thrown Wohl to the wolves is because he knows that whoever he would send in to replace him wouldn't be able to do a damned thing Wohl hasn't already done. And he-Carlucci-would look even worse if his pinch hitter struck out."

  "Yes, I see."

  "Shooting a cop is like shooting the pope," Lowenstein said. "You just can't tolerate it. So you throw all the resources you can lay your hands on at the job. We've done that, and that hasn't been good enough. But there's other crimes in the city, and you can't keep it up. Not even if it means that for the first time in the history of the City of Philadelphia, a cop killer will get away with it."

  "Really? This has never happened before?"

  "Never," Lowenstein said. "Not once. And, at the risk of repeating myself, you can't let anyone get away with shooting a cop."

  "So what will happen?"

  Lowenstein shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  "And two other little items to brighten my day came to my attention," he said. "One connected to the Magnella-that's the name of the young cop-job. Interesting problem of ethics. You know Captain Frieberg, Manny Frieberg?"

  "Sure."

  "He's got the 9^th District. One of my boys. Good cop. There are those that say I'm his rabbi."

  "I've heard the term," Rabbi Kuntz said with a chuckle.

  "He came to see me just before I went to see the mayor. At half past three this morning, one of his cars answered a call about a body in a saloon parking lot. It wasn't a body. It was a passed-out drunk. Specifically, it was one of the hotshot homicide detectives I mentioned a moment ago, who were transferred from Homicide to Peter Wohl. He passed out, fortunately, between the barroom door and his car, so he didn't have a chance to run into the cardinal archbishop or a station wagon full of nuns."

  Kuntz chuckled, and then asked, "Does he have a drinking problem?"

  Lowenstein ignored the question.

  "When they tried to wake him up," he went on, "he got belligerent, so they took his gun away from him and locked him up in a district holding cell. When Manny came in, he turned him loose and then came to see me."

  "You said 'ethical problem'?"

  "If he worked for me, I'd know how to deal with him. I'd tell him if I heard he had so much as sniffed a cork for six months, he would be on the recovered stolen car detail forever. "

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Two kinds of stolen cars are recovered. The ones some kids took for a joy ride and ditched, or ones that somebody has stripped and abandoned. In either case, it has to be investigated. Lots of forms that no one will ever see again have to be filled out. It's the worst job a detective can get. For a Homicide detective, it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to him."

  "But?"

  "He doesn't work for me. So what do I do, go tell Peter Wohl? Since he doesn't work for me, it's none of my business, right? And I don't know how Peter would handle it. He's under a hell of a lot of pressure, and he would not be pleased to hear that one of the two men he's forced to rely on has a bad bottle problem."

  "Is that what it is? The man is an alcoholic?"

  "Maybe not yet, but almost. What happened is that his wife caught him in the wrong bed. The judge awarded the wife everything but his spare pair of socks. He's living in a cheap room out by the University, eating baked beans out of the can. And the ex-wife is using his money to support a boyfriend."

  "How sad," Kuntz said.

  The doorbell played "Be It Ever So Humble."

  "That's O'Hara," Lowenstein said, looking at his watch. "He has only one virtue, punctuality. The subject we were on is now closed, okay?"

  Kuntz nodded.

  Lowenstein left the kitchen and returned in a moment leading Mickey O'Hara, who had a bottle in a brown bag in his hand, and a young woman.

  "If I knew the rabbi was going to be here, I'd have brought two of these," Mi
ckey said, handing the bag to Lowenstein. He pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch from it.

  "Hello, Mickey, how are you?" Kuntz said.

  "I won't say you shouldn't have done this, because you should have," Lowenstein said.

  "Don't let it go to your head, theBulletin's paying for it."

  The young woman with Mickey O'Hara, Kuntz thought (almost simultaneously realizing that it was not a kind thought), was not what he would have expected. She was-he searched for the word and came up with-wholesome. More than that. She was tastefully, conservatively dressed, with just the right amount of makeup. She had a full head of well-coiffured dark brown hair.

  And she was, Kuntz saw, more than a little surprised, even shocked, at the exchange between Lowenstein and O'Hara.

  "I'm Stephen Kuntz," he said.

  "Eleanor Neal," she said. "How do you do?"

  "If you understand that these two are old friends," Kuntz said, "it explains a good deal."

  She smiled. "And is there a reason Mickey called you a rabbi?"

  "I happen to be a rabbi," Kuntz said.

  "Oh?" she said.

  "I'm Matt Lowenstein. Don't mind Mick and me. Welcome to Chez Lowenstein."

  "Thank you for having me," Eleanor said.

  "I just got to ask this," Lowenstein said.

  "No, you don't," Mickey said.

  "Mick!" Eleanor protested.

  "What he's going to ask is 'what is a nice girl like you doing going out with me?' "

  "Well, I don't think he would have asked that, but if he did, I would have said that finally you're introducing me to your friends."

  "What I was going to ask," Lowenstein said, more than a little lamely, "was how is it he's never brought you here before?"

  "Why haven't you, Mick?" Eleanor asked.

  "Well, you're here now, and that's all that counts," Kuntz said.

  "And if you'll make us a drink, I'll give you something else," O'Hara said.

  "Excuse me," Lowenstein said, sounding genuinely contrite. "What can I fix you, Miss Neal?"

  "Eleanor, please," she said. "Would you happen to have any white wine?"

  "Absolutely," Lowenstein said, and took a bottle from the refrigerator.

  "No, I don't mind helping myself to the Scotch, thank you very much," O'Hara said.