Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  What surprised her in this regard was that they seemed to genuinely share her concern for what she thought of as the other group of innocent victims of a criminal act. The first group was of course those who had been robbed/beaten/ murdered by the criminal. The second group was the wives/ parents/children of the miserable sonofabitch who had committed the crime.

  Eileen McNamara had been an assistant district attorney almost three years when she first ran into Benjamin Solomon, M.D., F.A.C.S. More accurately, when Ben ran into her, rear-ending her Plymouth with his Cadillac as she was looking for a parking place in South Philadelphia.

  Ben hadn’t been going very fast, just not paying attention, but fast enough to do considerable damage to her trunk and right fender. The accident had taken place within, if not the sight, then the hearing, of Officer Martin Shaugnessy.

  Officer Shaugnessy had trotted to the scene. He pretended not to recognize the good-looking blonde assistant D.A. who had once made mincemeat out of the public defender who had decided that the best way to get his client off the hook was to paint arresting Officer Shaugnessy as an ignorant, prejudiced police thug who took an almost sexual pleasure in persecuting young men of Puerto Rican extraction.

  “How much have you had to drink, sir?” was his first question now to Dr. Solomon, who had just given Miss McNamara his effusive apologies and insurance card.

  “Drink? It’s eight-thirty in the morning! I haven’t even had my breakfast!”

  “People who speed and drive as recklessly as you obviously were, sir, are often driving under the influence. Would you please extend your right arm, close your eyes, and try to touch your nose?”

  “Officer, I don’t think the doctor has been drinking,” Miss McNamara said. “I think this was just a simple fender bender.”

  “You sure?” Officer Shaugnessy asked, dubiously.

  “I’m sure,” Miss McNamara said. “And I’m sure the doctor and I can work this out between us.”

  “Well, if you say so, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Miss McNamara said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Officer Shaugnessy said. He filled out the Form 75-48, which the insurance companies would need, and then went back to walking his beat.

  While they were waiting for the wrecker, Eileen became aware that the doctor kept stealing looks at her. For some reason, it didn’t make her uncomfortable; usually when men did that, it did.

  As the wrecker hauled her Plymouth away, Dr. Solomon looked directly at her. His eyes on hers did make her uncomfortable.

  “What was that with the cop all about?” Dr. Solomon asked. “You know him?”

  “I know a lot of cops,” Eileen said. “That one looked familiar. But do I know him? No.”

  “How is it you know a lot of cops?”

  “I’m an assistant D.A.”

  “Really? An assistant D.A.?” Ben had asked, genuinely surprised. “Good-looking blondes don’t come to mind when I hear that term.”

  “On the other hand, you do look like a doctor,” Eileen heard herself say, adding quickly, “What kind?”

  “Chest-cutter,” Ben had said. “Thoracic surgeon. What do you mean, I look like a doctor?”

  “Your eyes,” Eileen said. “You have intelligent, kind eyes.”

  When she heard what she had said, she blushed.

  “So do you,” Ben had said, softly, after a minute. “Can I buy you breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?”

  “And lunch, and dinner, and whatever else you want to eat for the rest of your life?”

  “You’re sure you haven’t been drinking?”

  “I don’t drink,” he said. “If I sound a little strange, I was at the table all night—until about an hour ago. And then I met you.”

  Benjamin Solomon, M.D., and Eileen McNamara, L.L.D., were united in matrimony not quite a month later, which caused varying degrees of joy and despair within their respective Eastern European Hebraic and Irish Roman Catholic communities.

  They had been married three years when Eileen told Ben the strangest thing had happened the previous afternoon. She had been asked if she would be interested in running for judge in a special election called by the governor to fill two vacancies caused by the incarceration of two incumbent jurists.

  “I think you should,” Ben had said after a moment. “You’ve been on both sides of the fence, and I think you’d do a good job straddling the middle. And you already have the name. Judge Solomon the Second.”

  She won the election handily, primarily, she believed, because nobody had ever heard of her, and there was general contempt for those whose names were known to the voters.

  And she liked the bench, at least trying to keep things fair and just.

  They hadn’t been able to have children—Ben’s fault, the gynecologists said, probably because he’d worn Jockey shorts all of his life—and she really regretted that. But she told herself that a child whose parents both had independent careers could not have gotten the attention it deserved, and that made being childless a little easier to bear.

  She had been on the bench six years when a delegation of pols came to her and proposed that she run for district attorney. The incumbent had been elected to Congress. Her service as an assistant D.A. and her six years on the bench had taught her that there was considerable room for improvement in the Office of the District Attorney.

  She talked the offer over with Ben. She was sure that she would make a hell of a good D.A., but she hadn’t been at all sure that she could win, and if she lost, she would be out of a job. She couldn’t run for reelection to the bench and for D.A. at the same time.

  Ben said she should give it a shot; she would always regret it later if she didn’t. And, Ben said, it wasn’t as if they were going to have to sell the dog to make the car payments if she found herself unemployed. That was a reference to the fact that Ben’s scalpel earned more than ten times as much money for them as the government paid her to wield her gavel.

  She ran, and won with fifty-two percent of the vote. The first time she ran for reelection, she got fifty-eight percent, and the last time, she’d garnered sixty-seven percent of the vote.

  Eileen McNamara Solomon had two cellular telephones, which, when she was there, she placed in rechargers on her desk beside the office phone with all its buttons. One of the cellulars, which buzzed when called, was her official phone. She made herself available with it around-the-clock.

  The second Nokia cellular had a green face, and when it was called, it played “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” This was her private line, its number known to very few people. It had been a gift from Ben, who said that, believe it or not, he had a busy schedule, too, and didn’t like to be put on hold.

  When the green phone began to play “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” she thought it was probably Ben, and wondered if he was about to ask her to lunch.

  “Hi,” she said to the telephone.

  “You busy, Eileen?” a female voice inquired. She knew the voice.

  “Never too busy for you, Martha. How are you?”

  Eileen McNamara and Martha Peebles had met in Art Appreciation 101 at the University of Pennsylvania, and the tall, then sort of skinny eighteen-year-old Irish girl and the seventeen-year-old slight, short WASP with an acne condition had been immediately comfortable with each other.

  Eileen had told Martha all about her family, then taken her home to meet “King Kong”—her brother—and her father, both bricklaying subcontractors, and her mother. Martha had been visibly reluctant to talk about her family, except to say that her mother had died and she lived with her father and brother, who was a would-be actor.

  Martha had not offered to take Eileen home with her, and Eileen wondered if she was maybe ashamed of her father, or her home, and went out of her way to make sure Martha understood she didn’t care if her father “had problems” or what her house looked like, or how much money there was.

  It was four months before Martha finally took Eileen home, on a Saturday,
and Eileen got to meet the brother, Stephen, who was light on his feet, and her father, Alexander.

  Martha had shown her around the house and property, which had taken a little time, as there were twenty-eight rooms in the turn-of-the-century mansion set on fourteen acres behind stone walls on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, plus a guest house, a hothouse, and stables for Alexander Peebles’s polo ponies.

  “I never saw anything like this,” Eileen had confessed, as they left the stables. “Not even in the movies.”

  Martha had looked at her.

  “I really don’t want this to change things between us,” Martha said. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”

  Eileen had never forgotten the frightened look in Martha’s eyes.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “And don’t tell anybody else, please.”

  “Why should I?”

  Eileen had never had a best friend in high school, and neither, Martha said, had she. They became and remained best friends and stayed best friends. Martha was the first person Eileen had told about Ben, right after he rear-ended her. And Martha had been her only bridesmaid when she married Ben.

  And Eileen really worried about Martha, particularly after her father died, cutting the queer brother out of his will, and leaving everything to Martha. Everything included the Tamaqua Mining Corporation, which owned, among other things, somewhere between ten and twelve percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States.

  There had been no man; there never had been one in Martha’s life seriously. There were several reasons for this, Eileen thought, the primary reason being that Martha, aware that she was no great beauty, suspected that what few suitors she had had were primarily interested in her money, followed closely by Martha’s comparison of her young men with her father, and finding that none of them came close to matching up.

  Eileen really thought that maybe her best friend was losing it when she began to complain that her house was being burgled on a more or less regular basis, and that the police weren’t paying attention.

  Eileen called Denny Coughlin and told him she would appreciate it if he would lean on the commanding officer of the Fourteenth District and get him to send enough uniforms around to 606 Glengarry Lane often enough to convince the inhabitant that her property and person were being adequately protected.

  Denny Coughlin had called her back within the hour to tell her she could put her mind at rest about Miss Peebles. He’d called the Fourteenth District commander, as she’d asked him to do, and Captain Jessup had told him he was a little late. It seems Miss Peebles’s lawyer, Brewster Payne, had talked with his partner, Colonel Mawson, who’d telephoned Police Commissioner Czernich about Miss Peebles’s problem.

  The commissioner had called Jessup and told him not to worry about Miss Peebles anymore. He had given the problem to Special Operations, and Highway Patrol would now be rolling by 606 Glengarry on a regular—at least hourly—basis. Special Operations had been told the commissioner didn’t want to hear of any more problems at 606 Glengarry Lane.

  The next morning, just after Judge Solomon had walked into her chambers at nine, Martha Peebles had called.

  “Eileen, it happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “My knight in shining armor. He finally came.”

  “Martha, are you all right?”

  “His name is David Pekach, and he’s the captain commanding Highway Patrol. And we did it, Eileen!”

  Martha reported that Captain Pekach had called to inform her that her property would now be patrolled by Highway Patrol on a regular, frequent basis, and that she could put her mind at rest.

  “My God, Eileen. He’s so much like Daddy. All man. You just feel safe when you’re with him.”

  “What do you mean you did it, Martha?”

  “You know what I mean,” Martha said, not even very shyly.

  “You’re not telling me this cop just walked in the door, and you took him to bed?”

  “No, of course not. Not then. What happened was that he said he would swing by at midnight himself, and I said I never went to bed that early, and if he had the time—didn’t have to get home to his wife—why didn’t he stop in and I’d give him a cup of coffee. And he said he wasn’t married, and thank you, he’d like a cup of coffee. And he came back at midnight, and that’s when we did it.”

  “I think you’re out of your mind.”

  “I know. I’m out of my mind with love. His first name is David. And I thought it was going to hurt the first time, and it didn’t. God, Eileen, it was wonderful!”

  “Denny, tell me about Captain David Pekach of Highway Patrol,” was the call that came next.

  “What would you like to know, Eileen? And why?”

  “The why’s my business. Tell me about him.”

  “What about him? He’s a good cop.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No. He’s never been married. Before he made captain, and they gave him Highway Patrol, he was a lieutenant in Narcotics. He grew a pigtail, and the dealers thought he was one of them. He’s got one hell of an arrest record.”

  “That’s all?”

  “When he was a rookie detective in Homicide, just a kid, when the rest of the department didn’t think the sainted Fort Festung could possibly do anything like hurt his girlfriend, Dave Pekach finally got a judge to give him a search warrant—”

  “I know who he is,” Eileen interrupted, remembering him from the trial.

  “Like I said, Eileen, he’s a very good cop.”

  “Tell me about him and women. I understand he’s quite a swordsman.”

  “Who told you that?” Coughlin asked. “Eileen, you’ve seen him. He’s a little guy. Looks like a weasel. Women do the opposite of swoon when they see him. I’ve never even seen him with a woman. What’s this all about?”

  “Thanks, Denny.”

  Brewster Courtland Payne, Esq., gave Miss Martha Peebles in marriage to Captain David Pekach three weeks later. The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon was the matron of honor.

  “Eileen, I realize this is short notice, but I’d really like you and Ben to come for supper tonight,” Martha Peebles Pekach said now.

  “What’s up?”

  “Brewster Payne’s son—Matt?—just made sergeant, and Precious and I are having a little party for him.”

  “That kid made sergeant?” Eileen asked, surprised. Very privately, she thought of Detective Matt Payne as the Wyatt Earp—or maybe the Stan Colt—of the Main Line. Most cops never draw their weapons in twenty years of service. Brewster Payne’s kid had already shot two critters and been involved in an O.K. Corral shoot-out in Bucks County and he hadn’t been on the job much over five years.

  And now he’s a sergeant?

  “He was number one on The List. The mayor promoted him this morning.”

  “I’ll have to check with Ben,” Eileen said.

  “With or without him, Eileen, please? Sixish.”

  [THREE]

  Lieutenant Jason Washington, who was sitting in his glass-walled office, his feet resting on the open lower drawer of his desk, deep in thought, became aware that Detective Kenneth J. Summers, a portly forty-year-old, who was on the desk, was waving at him.

  He raised his eyebrows to suggest that Summers now had his attention. Summers pointed to the telephone. Washington nodded and reached for it.

  “Homicide, Lieutenant Washington.”

  “Dave Pekach, Jason.”

  “Dare I to hope that you are calling to tell me two critters have flagged down a Highway car and, overwhelmed by remorse, are asking how they can go about confessing to the Roy Rogers job?”

  “You don’t have them yet?” Pekach asked, surprised.

  “You know where we are, David?” Washington said. “In the absence of a better idea, I have four people running down a somewhat esoteric idea proposed by the newest member of our happy little family.”

  “Matt?”

  “Indeed. Sergeant
Matthew Payne. He wondered—causing Tony Harris some chagrins—and between thee and me, me too—for not having had the same thought first—why Doer Number One took the trouble to put his weapon under Kenny Charlton’s bulletproof vest instead of simply shooting him in the head.”

  “Yeah. I wonder why.”

  “There may be no reason, but for the moment, we are considering the possibility that he knew Kenny, felt some personal animosity toward him, and wanted to make sure the wound was fatal.”

  “That’s possible. That sounds like a deliberate act, not like something that just happened.”

  “So we are now compiling a photo album of every young African-American critter Kenny ever arrested. And since Kenny spent many years on the street, there is a large number of such critters.”

  “It may work, Jason,” Pekach said, thoughtfully.

  “And I have Tony starting all over again from Step One,” Washington said.

  “Actually, I was calling about Matt,” Pekach said. “My Martha wants to wash down his sergeant’s badge. . . .”

  “Somehow I don’t think Your Martha used that phrase.”

  “She’s having a few people in, is the way she put it. You and Your Martha, of course, and Tony. And My Martha asked me to ask you if it would be a good idea to ask the other guys in Homicide.”

  “What and where are the festivities?”

  “Tonight, here. Six, six-thirty. If it stays nice, outside. Like the last one. Which, come to think of it, Lieutenant, was to wash down your new badge.”

  “I was about to say, David, that tonight is not the best of times. But then I remembered the profound philosophical observation that all work, et cetera, et cetera. Tony will be there, I’ll see to that, and so will My Martha and I. And I will put a card on the bulletin board advising everyone that edibles and intoxicants will be available at 606 Glengarry Lane for anyone interested in celebrating Sergeant Payne’s promotion.”

  “You think anyone will come?”

  “Edibles and intoxicants may entice one or two. And simple curiosity about Castle Pekach will entice some of the others. I don’t want to make it a command performance. Is Henry going to grace the premises?”