Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  Amy Payne was in the kitchen with her mother and Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, the Payne housekeeper, when Matt walked in. They were peeling shrimp. Amy was a not-quite-pretty young woman who wore her hair short, not for purposes of beauty but because it was easier to care for that way.

  Mrs. Newman was a comfortable-looking gray-haired woman in her fifties. Patricia Payne was older than she looked at first glance. She was trim, for one thing, with a luxuriant head of dark brown, almost reddish hair, and she had the fair skin of the Irish.

  “Well, if it isn’t the famous soon-to-be Sergeant Matthew Payne,” Amy greeted her brother. “How good of you to find time in your busy schedule for us.”

  “Amy!” Patricia Payne protested.

  “Got another fire hydrant, did you, Sigmund?” Matt said, as he walked to the table and kissed his mother.

  “You were on television,” Patricia Payne said. “I guess you know.”

  “That wasn’t my idea,” Matt said. “The mayor’s press guy grabbed my arm and said ‘You stand there.’ ”

  “You did look uncomfortable,” his mother said. “Well, I guess congratulations are in order, aren’t they?”

  “That’s what I came out to tell you,” Matt said. “How did you find out?”

  “Not from you, obviously,” Amy said.

  “Hey, I tried to call when I found out,” Matt said. “Didn’t I, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And she told me you and Dad were going to be overnight in Wilmington,” Matt said, and added, “I even tried to call you, Sigmund Freud.”

  “I thought that had to be you. Sophomoric humor.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Patricia Payne said.

  “He told the receptionist to tell me they were going to repossess my television unless they got paid,” Amy said.

  “Matt, you didn’t,” Patricia Payne said, but her face revealed that she found a certain element of humor in the situation.

  “I walked into the office, and the receptionist, all embarrassed, whispered in my ear and said that the finance company had called—”

  Mrs. Newman laughed out loud.

  “I’m going to get you for that, wiseass,” Amy said.

  “I put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator after Denny called,” Patricia Payne said. “Go get your father and we’ll open it. He’s in the living room.”

  “Uncle Denny called?” Matt asked.

  “We’re invited to the promotion ceremony,” Patricia said. “Denny’s very proud of you. We all are.”

  “You, too, Sigmund?” Matt asked.

  Dr. Payne gave him the finger.

  “And that goes for your boss, too,” she said. “We had dinner Monday night and he didn’t say a goddamn word.”

  “All Peter knew was that The List was out. He didn’t know when the promotion would come through, except that it wasn’t going to be anytime soon. That’s probably why he didn’t tell you.”

  She snorted.

  Matt walked out of the kitchen, down a narrow corridor, and through a door into a rather small, comfortably furnished room with book-lined walls, and the chairs arranged to face a large television screen.

  Brewster C. Payne was sitting with his feet up on the matching ottoman of a red leather armchair, one of two. He was a tall, angular, dignified man in his early fifties.

  He had a legal brief in his lap and his right hand was wrapped around a glass of whiskey.

  “You were on the boob tube,” he said. “You looked distressed. ”

  “I was,” Matt said, and then went on: “Amy’s pissed that Uncle Denny told you before I did. For the record, I tried to call just as soon as I found out.”

  “That’s not why she’s . . . somewhat less than enthusiastic, ” Brewster Payne said. “I think she was hoping you’d fail the test and leave the police department.”

  “Mother’s got champagne in the fridge,” Matt said, changing the subject. “But I’d rather have a quick one of those.”

  Payne pointed at a bottle of scotch, sitting with a silver water pitcher, a silver ice bowl, and several glasses. Matt helped himself, and while he was doing so, Brewster Payne rose from his chair. When Matt raised his glass, his father held out his glass and touched Matt’s.

  “It’s what you want, Matt, so I’m happy for you. And proud. Number one!”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can stay for supper? We bought some shrimp on the road from Wilmington. . . .”

  “Sure. I made shrimp last night for Chad and Daffy, but what the hell. . . .”

  “We could thaw a steak.”

  “Shrimp’s fine. Daffy was playing matchmaker again. I’d already met her. She’s from Los Angeles. She’s handling, I guess is the word, Stan Colt when he comes to town. His real name is Stanley Coleman.”

  “I saw it in the paper. Are you involved with that somehow? ”

  “Peter sent me to a meeting to see what Dignitary Protection is going to need to protect Super Cop. Monsignor Schneider—who sitteth at the right hand of the Bishop—was there. I think he’s a cop groupie. He knew all about Doylestown. Anyway, he asked for me by name. When Super Cop, aka Colt aka Coleman comes to town, I’ll be temporarily assigned to Dignitary Protection. Terry said he’s interested in very young women. That ought to make it interesting.”

  “Is that the young woman’s name, ‘Terry’?”

  “Terry Davis. Two ‘r’s and a ‘y.’ She said her father’s a lawyer with movie connections, and he got her the job with GAM. Which stands for Global Artists Management.”

  “I think I know him,” Brewster Payne said. “If it’s the same fellow, he masterfully defends, whenever challenged, the motion picture industry’s amazingly imaginative accounting practices.”

  “Interesting,” Matt said. “If you happen to bump into him . . ."”

  “I’m getting the impression that you are somewhat taken with this young lady, and therefore not entirely unhappy with the prospect of protecting . . . what did you call him? ‘Super Cop’?”

  “She’s a blonde. Nice legs,” Matt said. “And she knows how to peel shrimp. What more can one ask for?”

  “What indeed?” Brewster Payne said.

  “Matt,” Patricia Payne said at the door, “I told you I was going to open a bottle of champagne.”

  “I needed a little liquid courage to face Sigmund Freud,” Matt said.

  She turned without replying, and after a moment, her son and husband followed her into the kitchen.

  The three women were standing around the chopping block in the middle of the kitchen. They each held a champagne glass, and there were two more on the chopping block. And something else, wrapped in a handkerchief.

  Matt and his father picked up the champagne stems.

  “To Sergeant Payne,” Patricia Payne said, and they all touched glasses.

  Matt took a sip and set it down.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she said. “I wanted the family to be together when I gave it to you.”

  She picked up the handkerchief and handed it to him. Even before he unwrapped it, Matt knew what it was. It was a police badge, and he knew whose.

  “Your father’s,” she said.

  Matt looked at the sergeant’s badge, Number 471, of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia.

  “When Denny called,” Patricia Payne went on, “he said that he could arrange for you to be assigned your father’s number if I wanted. I told him I thought you would like that. And he asked me if I happened to still have it, and I told him I’d have to look. I found it. It was in the attic. And your father’s off-duty gun, the snub-nosed .38.”

  He looked at his mother but didn’t say anything.

  “Your father was a good man, Matt,” his mother said. “A good police officer.”

  “I have two fathers,” Matt said, his voice breaking. “My other father is a good man, too.”

  Brewster Payne looked at him.

  “Write this down, M
att. Never reply to a heartfelt compliment. You never can come up with something worth saying.”

  He put his arm around Matt’s shoulder, and then embraced him.

  “Give that to Denny before the ceremony tomorrow,” Patricia Payne said. “He’ll know how to handle it.”

  Matt nodded, and slipped the badge into his pocket.

  “Under the circumstances,” Brewster Payne said, picking up his whiskey glass, “barring objections, I think I’ll have another of these.”

  “Me, too,” Matt said.

  “First, we’ll finish the champagne,” Patricia Payne said. “And then we’ll all have a drink.”

  Matt had just turned onto I-476 in Swarthmore to return to Philadelphia when the S-Band radio in the Crown Victoria went off: "S-Twelve.”

  He pulled the microphone from under the center armrest.

  “Twelve.”

  “Meet the inspector in the 700 block of North Second.”

  “Got it. En route. Thank you,” he said.

  It was entirely possible that a crime had been committed in the 700 block of North Second Street, requiring his professional attention. But it was far more likely that he was going to find Inspector Wohl inside the premises at 705 North Second, which was known as Liberties Bar, and was the preferred watering hole of the Homicide Bureau.

  I wonder what that’s all about?

  I wonder why he didn’t call me on the cell phone?

  Tomorrow, I will no longer be S-Twelve.

  There was a somewhat battered, three-year-old Crown Victoria parked on Second Street in front of Liberties Bar. And a last year’s Crown Victoria, three brand-new Crown Victorias, and a Buick Rendezvous.

  When Matt walked into Liberties, the drivers of these vehicles were sitting around two tables pushed together along the wall, across from the ornately carved, century-old bar. They were Deputy Commissioner Coughlin, Chief Inspector Lowenstein, Inspector Wohl, Lieutenant Washington, Detective Harris, and Michael J. O’Hara, Esq.

  There was a bottle of Old Bushmills Irish whiskey, a bottle of Chivas Regal, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and two bowls, one with cashews, the other with stick pretzels, on the table.

  “What’s going on?” Matt asked, slipping into a chair at the table beside Harris.

  “I am interrogating a witness to the Roy Rogers job,” Harris said, nodding at O’Hara. “And getting nothing out of him.”

  “Jesus, Tony,” Mickey said. “The bastards took a shot at me!”

  Matt poured scotch into a glass.

  “It would behoove you to go easy on that tonight, Detective Payne,” Wohl said. “Which is the reason we put the arm out for you. We didn’t want you to go off somewhere and get smashed by yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said, and picked up the drink and took a sip. Then he took his father’s badge from his apartment and slipped it to Denny Coughlin.

  “Mom found that, and said to give it to you,” he said.

  Coughlin looked at the badge, then laid it on the table.

  “What’s that?” Lowenstein asked.

  “Jack Moffitt’s sergeant’s badge,” Coughlin replied. “I remember the day he got it.” He looked at Matt and said, “I don’t want to hand this to your mother a second time. You understand me?”

  Matt’s mouth ran away with him.

  “Color me careful.”

  “Watch your lip, Matty!” Coughlin said.

  “That would make a good yarn,” Mickey O’Hara said. “ ‘New Sergeant Gets Hero Father’s Badge.’ ”

  “Which you won’t write, right?” Lowenstein said.

  “Okay,” Mickey said, shrugging his shoulders and reaching for the bottle of Old Bushmills.

  “I loved Jack like a brother,” Coughlin said. “And he had a lot of balls. But he wasn’t a hero. His big balls got him killed. He answered a silent alarm without backup. . . .”

  “I remember,” Lowenstein said. “I had North Detectives when it happened.”

  “Jack knew better,” Coughlin said. “He could still be walking around if he’d done what he was trained—ordered—to do.”

  “Dennis, how would you judge Dutch Moffitt’s behavior?” Jason Washington’s sonorous voice asked.

  Coughlin looked at him, obviously annoyed at the question.

  “Was that an excess of male ego—‘I’m Dutch Moffitt of Highway Patrol. I can handle this punk by myself’?” Washington pursued. “Or a professional assessment of the situation in which he found himself, with the same result?”

  Coughlin looked at him for a long moment before deciding if and what to answer.

  “Dutch said, ‘Lay the gun on the counter, son. I don’t want to have to kill you. I’m a police officer.’ Was that the right thing to do? I think so. I would like to think that’s what I would have done. I would also like to think I would have looked around for a second doer. Dutch didn’t, and the junkie girlfriend shot him.”

  “I worked with Dutch,” Peter Wohl said. “I can’t believe he didn’t look for a second doer. He had trouble keeping his pecker in his pocket, but he was a very good street cop.”

  “Your mother never told you, ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead,’ Peter?” Coughlin said. “Especially in front of the deceased’s nephew?”

  Wohl shrugged, unrepentant. Coughlin had another thought.

  “Your grandmother’s going to be in the mayor’s office tomorrow, Matty. I thought she had a right to be.”

  “Oh, shit!” Matt blurted.

  Coughlin glared angrily at him.

  “I was going to tell her later,” Matt said, somewhat lamely. “Maybe even go by.”

  “She’s your grandmother, Matt,” Coughlin said, on the edge of anger.

  “I don’t like the way she treats my mother,” Matt said.

  “Don’t tell me she’s still pissed that Jack’s widow married Payne?” Lowenstein asked.

  “It’s a religious thing, Matt,” Coughlin said. “Patricia raised Matt as an Episcopal after Payne adopted him.”

  “You Christians do have your problems, don’t you?” Lowenstein asked. “How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?”

  Coughlin gave him the finger.

  “I don’t agree with her, Matty,” Coughlin said. “You know that. But she’s still your grandmother.”

  “Does my mother know she’s coming?”

  “If your mother knew, she would, being the lady she is, not go.”

  “Jesus—”

  “Before you two continue with what is sure to be an indeterminable discussion of Mother Moffitt,” Washington interrupted, “may I finish with my profound observation?”

  Matt realized—wondering why it had taken him so long—that while no one at the table was drunk, it was also obvious that no one was on their first—or third—drink, either. He looked at the bottles. The Chivas Regal was half empty; the Jack Daniel’s and the Old Bushmills were almost dry.

  And Washington had even called Coughlin by his first name.

  What the hell is this all about? Why are all these people sitting around here getting smashed?

  “How could we stop you?” Mickey O’Hara asked.

  Washington continued, “With the given that Sergeant Jack Moffitt was a good street cop, that Captain Dutch Moffitt was a good street cop, and that Officer Charlton had survived almost to retirement as a street cop, what mistake—indeed, what fatal mistake—did all three of them make?”

  “They weren’t as good as they thought they were?” Mickey asked.

  “Close, Michael,” Washington said.

  “Oh, shit, not that ‘they didn’t turn over the rock under the rock’ crap again,” Tony Harris said.

  “Yes, indeed,” Washington said. “That ‘turn over the rock under the rock’ crap again. If Sergeant Moffitt had looked around the gas station one more time, if Dutch had looked around the Waikiki Diner one more time, if Charlton had taken one more look . . .”

  “I don’t think that’s such a profound observation, Jason,” Coughli
n said.

  “More like self-evident,” Lowenstein said.

  “I was trying to make the point for Matt’s edification,” Washington said.

  Coughlin looked at him, then at Matt.

  “He’s right, Matty,” he said. “Pay attention.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “Would you like to see how your names will appear in tomorrow’s Bulletin?” Mickey asked. “Or shall we go back to discussing Mother Moffitt?”

  He took several sheets of paper from his inside jacket pocket and swung them back and forth.

  “Curiosity underwhelms me,” Wohl said, and held his hand out for the sheets of paper.

  Slug—Mayor Forms Double Murder Task Force

  (Jack, don’t bury this with the underwear ads. These slimeballs need catching. AND USE THE PICTURES)

  By Michael J. O’Hara

  Bulletin Staff Writer

  Photos by Jack Weinberg

  Bulletin Photographer

  Philadelphia—Mayor Alvin W. Martin, surrounded by the heavy hitters of the Philadelphia Police Department, and standing not far from where the body of Officer Kenneth Charlton lay in state in the Monti Funeral Home in the 2500 block of South Broad Street, this afternoon announced the formation of a special police task force to bring the two men who murdered Charlton and Mrs. Maria M. Fernandez during the robbery Sunday evening of the Roy Rogers restaurant on South Broad Street.

  “Both a citizen—a single mother of three—and a police officer have lost their lives as a result of a brutal attack that affects not only their grieving survivors but every citizen of Philadelphia,” the mayor said, adding: “This sort of outrage cannot be tolerated, and it will not be.”

  (Photo 1 L-R, Lowenstein, Mariani, Martin, Coughlin) Flanked by Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani, Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, and Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein, Martin announced that Inspector Peter F. Wohl, the highly regarded commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, would head the task force.