Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Who the fuck is that?” Inspector Peter Wohl wondered aloud, in annoyance that approached rage.

  Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., who had been lying with her head on his chest, raised her head and looked down at him.

  “Oh, my goodness! Are we going to have to wash our naughty little mouth out with soap?” she inquired.

  “Sorry,” Wohl said, genuinely contrite. “I was just thinking how nice it is to go to sleep with you like this. And then that goddamned chime!”

  Amy was not sure whether he meant naked in each other’s arms, or sexually sated, but in either case she agreed.

  She kissed his cheek, tenderly, and then, eyes mischievous, said innocently, “I wonder who the fuck it could possibly be?”

  “What am I doing? Teaching you bad habits?” Peter asked, chuckling.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  She pushed herself off him and got out of bed, then walked on tiptoes to peer out through the venetian blinds on the bedroom window.

  There was enough light, somehow, for him to be able to see her clearly.

  “My God, it’s Uncle Denny!” Amy said.

  What the hell does Denny Coughlin want this time of night?

  “We had the foresight, you will recall,” Peter said, chuckling, “to hide your car in my garage.”

  “You think he wants to come in?” Amy asked, very nervously.

  On the one hand, Amy, you march in front of the feminist parade, waving the banner of modern womanhood and gender equality, and on the other, you act like a seventeen-year-old terrified at the idea Uncle Denny will suspect that you and I are engaged in carnal activity not sanctioned for the unmarried.

  “No,” Peter said. “I’m sure all he wants to do is stand outside the door.”

  He got out of bed.

  “You just get back in bed and try not to sneeze,” Peter said. “And I will try to get rid of him as quickly as I can.”

  “I’ll have to get dressed,” Amy said.

  “Why bother?” Peter said as he put on his bathrobe. “If he comes in the bedroom, I don’t think he’ll believe you were in here helping me wash the windows. Maybe you could say you were making a house call, Doctor.”

  “Screw you, Peter,” Amy said. “This is not funny!”

  But she did get back into the bed and pulled the sheet up over her.

  Peter turned the lights off, then left the bedroom, closing the door.

  Then he turned and knocked on it.

  “Morals squad!” he announced. “Open up!”

  “You bastard!” Amy called, but she was chuckling.

  Peter turned the lights on in the living room, walked to the door, and opened it.

  Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin—who, in the process of maintaining his friendly relationship with the widow of his pal Sergeant John F. X. Moffitt, had become so close to the Payne family that all the Payne kids had grown up thinking of him as Uncle Denny—stood at the door.

  In a cloud of Old Bushmills fumes, Peter’s nose immediately told him.

  “I was in the neighborhood, Peter,” Coughlin said, “and thought I would take a chance and see if you were still up.”

  Peter had just enough time to decide, Bullshit, twice. I don’t think you were in the neighborhood, and even if you were, you got on the radio to get my location, and if you did that, you would have asked the operator to call me on the phone to see if I was up, when Coughlin added:

  “That’s bullshit. I wanted to see you. Radio said you were home. I’m sorry if I got you up. You got something going in there, I’ll just go.”

  Does he suspect Amy is in here with me?

  “Come on in. I was about to go to bed. We’ll have a nightcap.”

  “You’re sure?” Coughlin asked.

  “Come on in,” Peter repeated.

  Coughlin followed him into the living room, sat down on Peter’s white leather couch—a remnant, like several other pieces of very modern furniture in the apartment, of a long-dead and almost forgotten affair with an interior decorator—and reached for the telephone.

  As Peter took ice, glasses, and a bottle of James Jamison Irish whiskey from the kitchen, he heard Coughlin on the telephone.

  “Chief Coughlin,” he announced, “at Inspector Wohl’s house,” and then hung up.

  Peter set the whiskey, ice, and glasses on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down in one of the matching white leather armchairs.

  Coughlin reached for the whiskey, poured an inch into a glass, and took a sip.

  “This is not the first I’ve had of these,” he said, holding up the glass. “Mickey O’Hara came by the Roundhouse at six, and we went out and drank our dinner.”

  “There’s an extra bed here,” Peter said, “if you don’t feel up to driving home.”

  And then he remembered that not only was Amy in his bed, where she could hear the conversation, but that the moment she heard what he had just said she would decide he was crazy or incredibly stupid. Or, probably, both.

  If Denny Coughlin accepted the offer, there was no way he would not find out that Amy was here.

  Coughlin ignored the offer.

  “The trouble with Mickey is that he has a nose like a bird dog, and people tell him things they think he would like to know,” Coughlin said. “And he thinks like a cop.”

  “He would have made a good cop,” Peter agreed.

  He poured whiskey in a glass and added ice.

  “After he fed me about four of these,” Coughlin said, “he asked me whose birthday party it was we were all at at the Rittenhouse Club.”

  “We meaning you, me, Matt, and the FBI?”

  Coughlin nodded.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that Matty had had a little run-in with a couple of FBI agents, and you and I were pouring oil on some troubled waters.”

  “Did he buy it?”

  “He said he was naturally curious why a couple of FBI agents who don’t even work in Philadelphia were following Matty around in the first place.”

  “He knew they had been following him? God, he does find things out, doesn’t he?” Wohl said.

  “Including some things that you and I didn’t know,” Coughlin said. “Like when those two FBI agents were waiting in the Special Operations parking lot to see if Matty was coming out, a Highway Patrol sergeant—Nick DeBenedito—thought they looked suspicious and went and tapped on their car window and asked them who they were.”

  Coughlin smiled, and Wohl laughed.

  “It’s not funny, Peter,” Coughlin said. “And it gets worse. The FBI guys showed Nick their identification, and told him they were on the job, surveilling the guy driving the Porsche, and did Nick know what he was doing inside. Nick asked why did they want to know, and they told him it was none of his business. So Nick goes inside, tells the duty officer, who calls the FBI duty officer and asks him what a couple of FBI agents, one of them named Jernigan, are doing parked in the Special Operations parking lot, and the FBI duty officer says he doesn’t have an agent named Jernigan. So Nick and the duty officer go back to the parking lot, and the FBI guys are gone. Then they go see Matt, who’s working upstairs, and ask him what’s going on, and Matt tells them not to worry about it, the FBI thinks he’s a kidnapper they’re looking for.”

  “Oh, God!” Wohl said, laughing. “So within thirty minutes, it’s all over Special Operations. The FBI with egg on its face again.”

  “That’s funny, I admit. But what’s not funny is, of course, that somebody couldn’t wait to tell Mickey, and he put that and us being in the Rittenhouse Club together and came up with the idea that something’s going on he doesn’t know about, and the way to find out is to ask me.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I didn’t feel free to tell him until I’d first checked with you.”

  What do you call that? Passing the buck?

  “So he’s going to come see me?” Wohl asked. “First thing in the morning, no doubt
?”

  “Probably, since he didn’t beat me here,” Coughlin said, smiling. He held up his whiskey glass. “I told you, we mostly drank our dinner. I don’t like to make decisions when I do that. I figured telling Mickey he’d have to ask you would give us time to think how much we’re going to tell him. We’re going to have to tell him something.”

  Wohl didn’t reply.

  “So I decided to come here,” Coughlin said. “And on the way I had a couple of other unpleasant thoughts.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do me a favor, Peter, and don’t decide before you think it over that this is the whiskey talking.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Chief,” Peter said.

  “Yes, you would. I would too, if you showed up at my place at this hour of the night with half a bag on.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, and then Coughlin went on.

  “I’m worried about Matty,” he said. “I’m sorry I went along with this ‘cooperation’ with the FBI business.”

  “I don’t think you had much choice.”

  “I could have said no, and then gotten to Jerry Carlucci before Walter Davis did and told him why I said no.”

  “What would you have told him?”

  “That these animal activists are really dangerous people, and that Matt’s not experienced enough to deal with them.”

  “As I understood it, he isn’t going to deal with them. Just see if he can, by getting close to the Reynolds woman, positively locate them for the FBI. And the FBI will deal with them.”

  “Did you see what was in his eyes when I gave him that order?” Coughlin asked. “And I made that order as clear as I could.”

  “I remember. What about his eyes?”

  “There was a little moving sign in them. Like that sign in Times Square. You know what it said?”

  Wohl shook his head again.

  “Yeah, right. Say what you want, old man, but give me half a chance, and I’m going to put the arm on these people, make the FBI look stupid, and get to be the youngest sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department. Just like Peter Wohl.”

  Wohl was torn between wanting to smile at the image, and a sick feeling that Coughlin was right.

  “Chief, for one thing, Matt knows an order when he hears one.”

  “Ha!” Coughlin snorted.

  “And he’s both smart and getting to be a pretty good cop. He won’t do anything stupid.”

  “He’s too smart for his own good, he thinks he’s a much better cop than he really is, and what would you call crawling around on that ledge on the Bellvue-Stratford twelve stories above South Broad Street? That wasn’t stupid?”

  “That was stupid,” Wohl admitted.

  “And how would you categorize his using a boosted passkey to go into the Reynolds girl’s room in the hotel? The behavior of a seasoned, responsible police officer?”

  Wohl didn’t reply.

  “Not to mention taking the FBI on a wild-goose chase in North Philly?”

  “Well, under the circumstances, I might have done that myself,” Wohl said. “But I see your point.”

  “There’s a lot of his father in Matty,” Coughlin said. It took Wohl a moment to understand Coughlin was not talking about Brewster Cortland Payne. “Jack Moffitt would still be walking around if he had called for the backup he knew he was supposed to have before he answered that silent alarm and got himself shot. And Dutch Moffitt would still be alive, too, if he hadn’t tried to live up to his reputation as supercop.”

  “Chief,” Wohl said, “I’m sure Matt has thought about what happened to his uncle Dutch and his father. And learned from it.”

  “You don’t believe that for a second, Peter,” Coughlin said. “When did he think about it? Before or after he climbed out on that twelfth-floor ledge? And if Chenowith or any of the other lunatics show up in Harrisburg, you think he’s going to think about what happened to Dutch and his father? Or try to put the arm on him—or all of them?”

  Wohl shrugged and didn’t reply for a moment.

  “Well, what do you think we should do?” he asked finally.

  “How’s he going to check in?”

  “Twice a day. With either Mike Weisbach or Jason Washington, or Weisbach’s sergeant, Sandow. Or whenever—if—he finds something.”

  “Take the call yourself. Have a word with him. He just might listen to you. He thinks you walk on water.”

  “I’d already planned to do that,” Peter said.

  Coughlin met Wohl’s eyes. He looked for a moment as if he was going to say something else, but changed his mind. He picked up his glass and drained it.

  “I’ll let you go to bed,” he said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “Anytime, Chief. You know that,” Wohl said.

  “If I interrupted anything,” Coughlin said, nodding toward the closed door of Peter’s bedroom, “I’m sorry.”

  Jesus Christ, is he psychic? Or did Amy cough or something and I didn’t hear her and he did? Or did he take one look at my face and read on it the symptoms of the just-well-laid man?

  “You didn’t interrupt anything, Chief,” Wohl replied.

  “Good,” Coughlin said.

  He reached for the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Chief Coughlin en route from Inspector Wohl’s house to my place,” he said, and hung up.

  Then he walked to the door. He put out his hand to Wohl.

  “A strong word when you talk to our Matty, Peter.”

  “As strong as I can make it,” Wohl said.

  Coughlin nodded, then opened the door. Peter watched to make sure he made it safely down the stairway, then went inside the apartment, locked the door, and went into his bedroom.

  “I gather he’s gone?” Amy said. “He didn’t accept your gracious invitation to spend the night?”

  “Sorry about that,” Peter said. “He’s gone. How much did you hear?”

  “Everything,” she said.

  “He’s very fond of Matt,” Wohl said. “And he had a couple of drinks.”

  “I hardly know where to ask you to start,” Amy said. “Why don’t we start with the twelfth-floor ledge of the Bellvue-Stratford? That sounds very interesting.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, Amy. That ledge was two feet wide. And I really read the riot act to him when I heard about it.”

  “Two feet wide and twelve stories off the ground, right? Let’s have it, Peter.”

  “You read in the papers where a Vice Squad lieutenant was taking money from a call girl madam?”

  Amy nodded.

  “A lot of it took place in the Bellvue. Matt was on the surveillance detail. They put a microphone on a hotel-room window with a suction cup. The cup fell off. Matt went out on the ledge and put it back in place.”

  “He risked his life so you could arrest a call girl madam?”

  “We were really after the police officers involved. And don’t get mad at me, Amy. I didn’t tell him to do it. And I ate his ass out when I found out about it.”

  Amy snorted.

  Peter started to take his bathrobe off.

  “Just hold it right there,” Amy said. “This isn’t pick-it-up-where-we-left-it-when-we-were-so-rudely-interrup ted time. Who are these people Denny Coughlin is afraid Matt will try to arrest by himself?”

  “I can’t get into that,” Wohl said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Amy flared, parrot ing, “ ‘I can’t get into that’?”

  “It’s a highly confidential underway investigation.”

  “And you never talk about highly confidential underway investigations to the bimbo you’re banging, right?”

  “Is that what you think you are to me? Some bimbo I’m banging?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Peter,” Amy said.

  “And what am I to you, Amy?” Wohl heard himself asking, wondering where the sudden rage had come from. “A convenient stud? Once or twice a month, when the hormones get active, call the stu
d and ask if you can come over?”

  “How did we get on this subject?” she asked uncomfortably. “Is that what you really think?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said.

  Amy exhaled audibly.

  She met his eyes.

  “What do you want me to say? That I think I’m in love with you?”

  “If that were the truth, that would be a nice start.”

  “My patients, I am forced to conclude, are not the only ones who try to avoid facing the truth.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “In this case, the truth I seem to have been avoiding facing is that I am in love with you.”

  Peter didn’t reply.

  “No response to that?” Amy asked after a long moment.

  “You’re so matter-of-fact about it,” he said.

  “There’s something wrong with that?” Amy asked.

  Peter shook his head, “no.”

  “I’ll tell you what happens now,” Amy said. “If it’s the truth, it would be a nice start if you said, ‘I love you, too, Amy.’ ”

  “I love you, too, Amy.”

  “Okay, step two. Now you can take off your robe and come to bed, and after we do what people in love do, step three, you tell me all about this highly confidential underway investigation you’ve got my little brother involved in.”

  “Can I suggest step one-A?”

  “Suggest.”

  “I have a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator I’ve been saving for a suitable occasion.”

  “Very good. Go get it. Perhaps this love affair of ours isn’t going to be as hopeless as logic tells me it’s going to be.”

  “You think it’s hopeless?”

  “We’ll have to wait and find out, won’t we, Peter?”

  He left the bedroom to fetch the champagne. As he was standing by the sink, unwrapping the wire around the cork, Amy came out of the bedroom and went to him and wrapped her arms around him from the back.

  “It’s true,” she said, almost whispering. “When I saw you walking out of the bedroom, I suddenly realized, My God, I really do love that man.”

  It took Matt Payne ten minutes to get through the system set in place to protect Harrisburg’s chief of police from unnecessary intrusions on his time by the public and to his second-floor office in the police headquarters building, but once he got that far, he found that his passage had been greased.