Men In Blue boh-1

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Oh," he said.

  "Can I offer you a drink?" Jerome asked.

  "Yes, thank you," Wohl said. "I'd like a drink. Scotch?"

  "Absolutely," Jerome said, happily. Louise opened the door of a maple cabinet, revealing a large color television screen. She turned it on and, still bent over it, so that Wohl had a clear view of her naked breast, looked at him as she waited for it to come on.

  "The guy on 'Dragnet,' " Louise Dutton said, "Sergeant Joe Friday, would say, 'No ma'am, I'm on duty.'"

  "I'm not Sergeant Friday," Wohl said, with a faint smile.

  She's bombed, and unaware her dressing gown is open. Or is it the tobe-expected casualness about nudity of a hooker?

  That's an interesting possibility. She's obviously not walking the streets asking men if they want a date, but I don V think she's making half enough money smiling on television to afford this place. Is she somebody's mistress, some middle-aged big shot's extracurricular activity, who was taking a bus driver's holiday with Dutch?

  And who's Jerome? The friend of the family?

  The picture suddenly came on, and the sound. Louise turned the volume up, and stepped back as Jerome touched Wohl's shoulder and handed him a squarish glass of whiskey.

  The screen showed Louise Dutton's old convertible with a cop at the wheel leaving the Waikiki Diner parking lot. A female voice said, " This is a special 'Nine's News' bulletin. A Philadelphia police captain gave his life this afternoon foiling a holdup. 'Nine's News' co-anchor Louise Dutton was an eyewitness. Full details on 'Nine's News' at six."

  The Channel Nine logo came on the screen. A male voice said, "WCBLTV, Channel 9, Philadelphia. It's six o'clock."

  Another male voice said, as the "Nine's News" set appeared on the screen, " 'Nine's News' at six is next."

  The "Nine's News" logo appeared on the screen, and then dissolved into a close-up shot of Barton Ellison, a tanned, handsome, craggyfaced former actor, who had abandoned the stage and screen for television journalism, primarily because he hadn't worked in over two years.

  "Louise Dutton isn't here with me tonight," Barton Ellison said, in his deep, trained actor's voice, looking directly into the camera. " She wanted to be. But she was an eyewitness to the gun battle in which Philadelphia Highway Patrol Captain Richard C. Moffitt gave his life this afternoon. She knows the face of the bandit that is, at this moment, still free. Louise Dutton is under police protection. Full details, and exclusive 'Nine's News' film, after these messages."

  There followed twenty seconds of Louise being escorted to her car at the Waikiki Diner, and of the car, with a policeman at the wheel, following a police car out of the parking lot. Then there was a smiling baby on the screen, as a disposable-diaper commercial began.

  "Thatsonofabitch!" Louise Dutton exploded. She looked at Wohl. "I had nothing to do with that."

  "I don't understand," Wohl said.

  "I never told him I was under police protection," Louise said.

  "Oh," Wohl said. He could not understand why she was upset. He took a sip of his scotch. He couldn't tell what brand it was, only that it was expensive.

  The diaper commercial was followed by one for a new motion picture to be shown later that night for the very first time on television, and then for one for a linoleum floor wax which apparently had an aphrodisiacal effect on generally disinterested husbands.

  Then Louise reappeared. She looked into the camera.

  "Moments before he was fatally wounded," she said, "Police Captain Richard C. Moffitt said, 'Put the gun down, son. I don't want to have to kill you. I'm a police officer.'

  "Moffitt was meeting with this reporter over coffee in the Waikiki Diner in the sixty-five-hundred block of Roosevelt Boulevard early this afternoon. He was concerned with the image his beloved Highway Patrol has in some people's eyes… 'Carlucci's Commandos' is just one derogatory term for them.

  "He had just started to explain what they do, and why, and how, when he spotted a pale-faced blond young man police have yet to identify holding a gun on the diner's cashier.

  "Captain Moffitt was off duty, and in civilian clothing, but he was a policeman, and a robbery was in progress, and it was his duty to do something about it.

  "There was a good thirty-second period, maybe longer, during which Captain Moffitt could have shot the bandit where he stood. But he decided to give the bandit a break, a chance to save his life: 'Put the gun down, son. I don't want to have to kill you.'

  "That humanitarian gesture cost Richard C. Moffitt his life. And Moffitt's three children their father, and Moffitt's wife her husband.

  "The bandit had an accomplice, a woman. She opened fire on Moffitt. Her bullets struck all over the interior of the diner. Except for one, which entered Richard C. Moffitt's chest.

  "He returned fire then, and killed his assailant. "And then, a look of wonderment on his face, he slumped against a wall, and slid down to the floor, killed in the line of duty.

  "Police are looking for the pale-faced blond young man, who escaped during the gun battle. I don't think it will take them long to arrest him, and the moment they do, 'Nine's News' will let you know they have."

  A formal portrait of Dutch Moffitt in uniform came on the screen.

  "Captain Richard C. Moffitt," Louise said, softly, "thirty-six years old. Killed… shot down, cold-bloodedly murdered… in the line of duty.

  "My name is Louise Dutton. Barton?"

  She took three steps forward and turned the television off before Barton Ellison could respond. Peter Wohl took advantage of the visual opportunity offered.

  "That was just beautiful," Jerome Nelson said, softly. "I wanted to cry."

  I'll be goddamned, Peter Wohl thought, so did I.

  He looked at Louise, and saw her eyes were teary.

  "That bullshit about me being under police protection cheapened the whole thing," she said. "That cheap sonofabitch!"

  She looked at Wohl as if looking for a response.

  He said, "That was quite touching, Miss Dutton."

  "It won't do Dutch a whole fucking lot of good, will it? Or his wife and kids?" Louise said.

  "Do you always swear that much?" Wohl asked, astounding himself. He rarely said anything he hadn't carefully considered first.

  She smiled. "Only when I'm pissed off," she said, and walked out of the room.

  "God only knows how long that will take," Jerome Nelson said. "Won't you sit down, Inspector?" He waved Wohl delicately into one of four identical white leather upholstered armchairs surrounding a coffee table that was a huge chunk of marble.

  It did not, despite what Jerome Nelson said, take Louise Dutton long to get dressed. When she came back in the room Wohl stood up. She waved him back into his chair.

  "If you don't mind," she said, "I'll finish my drink."

  "Not at all," Wohl said.

  She sat down in one across from them, and then reached for a cigarette. Wohl stole another glance down her neckline.

  "What's your first name?" Louise Dutton asked, when she had slumped back into the chair.

  "Peter," he said, wondering why she had asked.

  "Tell me, Peter, does your wife know of this uncontrollable urge of yours to look down women's necklines?"

  He felt his face redden.

  "It's probably very dangerous," Louise went on. "The last time I felt sexual vibrations from a cop, somebody shot him."

  With a very great effort, which he felt sure failed, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl picked up his glass and took a sip with as much savoir faire as he could muster.

  ****

  The telephone was ringing when Peter Wohl walked into his apartment. He lived in West Philadelphia, on Montgomery Avenue, in a one-bedroom apartment over a four-car garage. It had once been the chauffeur's apartment when the large (sixteen-room) brownstone house on an acre and a half had been a single-family dwelling. There were now six apartments, described as "luxury," in the house, whose new owner, a corporation, restricted its tenants to those who ha
d neither children nor domestic pets weighing more than twenty-five pounds.

  Peter nodded and smiled at some of his fellow tenants, but he wasn't friendly with any of them. He had rebuffed friendly overtures for a number of reasons, among them the problems he saw in associating socially with bright young couples who smokedcannabis sativa, and probably ingested by one means or another other prohibited substances.

  To bust, or not to bust, that is the question! Whether 'tis nobler to apprehend (which probably would result in a stern warning, plus a slap on the wrist) or look the other way.

  Or, better yet, not to know about it, by politely rejecting invitations to drop by for a couple of drinks, and maybe some laughs, and who knows what else. They believed, he thought, what he had told them: that he worked for the city. They probably believed that he was a middle-level functionary in the Department of Public Property, or something like that. He was reasonably sure that his neighbors did not associate him with the fuzz, the pigs, or whatever pejorative term was being applied to the cops by the chicly liberal this week.

  And then there was the matter of his having two of the four garages, which meant that some of his fellow tenants had to park their cars on the street, or in the driveway, or find another garage someplace else. He had been approached by three of his fellow tenants at different times to give up one of his two garages, if not for fairness, then for money.

  He had politely rejected those overtures, too, which had been visibly disappointing and annoying to those asking.

  The apartment looked as if it had been decorated by an expensive interior decorator. The walls were white; there was a shaggy white carpet; the furniture was stylish, lots of glass and white leather and chrome. He had been going with an interior decorator at the time he'd taken the apartment, and willing to acknowledge that he knew next to nothing about decorating. Dorothea had decorated it for him, free of charge, and got the furniture and carpet for him at her professional discount.

  Dorothea was long gone, they having mutually agreed that the mature and civilized thing to do in their particular circumstance was to turn him in on a lawyer, and so was much of what she had called the"unity of ambience."

  A men's club downtown had gone under, and auctioned off the furnishings. Peter had bought a small mahogany service bar; two red overstuffed leather armchairs with matching footstools; and a six-byten-foot oil painting of a voluptuous nude reclining on a couch that had for fifty odd years decorated the men's bar of the defunct club. That had replaced a nearly as large modern work of art on the living room wall. The artwork replaced had had a title(!! Number Three.), but Peter had taken to referring to it as "The Smear," even before Love in Bloom had started to wither.

  Dorothea, very pregnant, had come to see him, bringing the lawyer with her. The purpose of the visit was to see if Peter could "do anything" for a client of the lawyer, who was also a dear friend, who had a son found in possession of just over a pound of Acapulco Gold brand ofcannabis sativa. Dorothea had been even more upset about the bar, the chairs, and the painting than she had been at his announcement that he couldn't be of help.

  "You've raped the ambience, Peter," Dorothea had said. "If you want my opinion."

  When Peter went into the bedroom, the red light was blinking on his telephone answering device. He snapped it off and picked up the telephone. "Hello?"

  "We're just going out for supper," Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl announced, without any preliminary greeting, in his deep, rasping voice, "and afterward, we're going to see Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt. Your mother thought you might want to eat with us."

  "I was over there earlier, Dad," Peter said. "Right after it happened."

  "You were?" Chief Inspector Wohl sounded surprised.

  "I went in on the call, Dad," Peter said.

  "How come?"

  "I was on Roosevelt Boulevard. I was the first senior guy on the scene. I just missed Jeannie at Nazareth Hospital, but then I saw her at the house."

  "But that was on the job," August Wohl argued. "Tonight's for close friends. The wake's tomorrow. You and Dutch were friends."

  "It won't look right, if you don't go to the house tonight." Mrs. Olga Wohl came on the extension. "We've known the Moffitts all our lives. And, tomorrow, at the wake, there will be so many people there

  …"

  "I'll try to get by later, Mother," Peter said. "I'm going out to dinner."

  "With who, if you don't mind my asking?"

  He didn't reply.

  "You hear anything, Peter?" Chief Inspector Wohl asked.

  "The woman who shot Dutch is a junkie. They have an ID on her, and on the guy, another junkie, who was involved. I think they'll pick him up in a couple of days; I wouldn't be surprised if they already have him. My phone answerer is blinking. A Homicide detective named Jason Washington's got the job-"

  "I know him," August Wohl interrupted.

  "I asked him to keep me advised. As soon as I hear something, I'll let you know."

  "Why should he keep you advised?" August Wohl asked.

  "Because the commissioner, for the good of the department, has assigned me to charm the lady from TV."

  "I saw the TV," Wohl's father said. "The blonde really was an eyewitness?"

  "Yes, she was. She just made the identification, of the dead girl, and the guy who ran. Positive. I was there when she made it. The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher."

  "White guy?"

  "Yeah. The woman, too. Her name is Schmeltzer. Her father has a grocery store over by Lincoln High."

  "Jesus, I know him," August Wohl said.

  "Dad, I better see who called," Peter said.

  "He's going to be at Marshutz amp; Sons, for the wake, I mean. They're going to lay him out in the Green Room; I talked to Gertrude Moffitt," Peter's mother said.

  "I'll be at the wake, of course, Mother," Peter said.

  "Peter," Chief Inspector Wohl, retired, said thoughtfully, "maybe it would be a good idea for you to wear your uniform to the funeral."

  "What?" Peter asked, surprised. Staff inspectors almost never wore uniforms.

  "There will be talk, if you're not at the house tonight-"

  "You bet, there will be," Peter's mother interjected.

  "People like to gossip," Chief Inspector Wohl went on. "Instead of letting them gossip about maybe why you didn't come to the house, let them gossip about you being in uniform."

  "That sounds pretty devious, Dad."

  "Either the house tonight, with his other close friends, or the uniform at the wake," Chief Inspector Wohl said. "A gesture of respect, one way or the other."

  "I don't know, Dad," Peter said..

  "Do what you like," his father said, abruptly, and the line went dead.

  He's mad. He offered advice and I rejected it. And he's probably right, too. You don't get to be a chief inspector unless you are a master practitioner of the secret rites of the police department.

  There was only one recorded message on the telephone answerer tape:

  "Dennis Coughlin, Peter. You've done one hell of a job with that TV woman. That was very touching, what she said on the TV. The commissioner saw it, too. I guess you know-Matt Lowenstein told me he saw you-that the commissioner wants you to stay on top of this. None of us wants anything embarrassing to anyone to happen. Call me, at the house, if necessary, when you learn something."

  While the tape was rewinding, Peter glanced at his watch.

  "Damn!" he said.

  He tore off his jacket and his shoulder holster and started to unbutton his shirt. There was no time for a shower. He was late already. He went into the bathroom and splashed Jamaica Bay lime cologne from a bottle onto his hands, and then onto his face. He sniffed his underarms, wet his hands again, and mopped them under his arms.

  He stripped to his shorts and socks, and then dressed quickly. He pulled on a pale blue turtleneck knit shirt, and then a darker blue pair of Daks trousers. He slipped his feet into loafers, put his arms through the
straps of the shoulder holster, and then into a maroon blazer. He reached on a closet shelf for a snap-brim straw hat and put that on. He examined himself in the full-length mirrors that covered the sliding doors to the bedroom closet.

  "My, don't you look splendid, you handsome devil, you!" he said.

  And then he ran down the stairs and put a key to the padlock on one of the garage doors, and pulled them open. He went inside. There came the sound of a starter grinding, and then an engine caught.

  A British racing green 1950 Jaguar XK-120 roadster emerged slowly and carefully from the garage. It looked new, rather than twenty-three years old. It had been a mess when Peter bought it, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant. He'd since put a lot of money and a lot of time into it. Even his mother appreciated what he had done; it was now his "cute little sporty car" rather than "that disgraceful old junky rattletrap."

  He drove at considerably in excess of the speed limit down Lancaster Avenue to Belmont, and then to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute. Barbara Crowley, R.N., a tall, lithe young woman of, he guessed, twenty-six, twenty-seven, who wore her blond hair in a pageboy, was waiting for him, and smiled when the open convertible pulled up to her.

  But she was pissed, he knew, both that he was late, and that he was driving the Jaguar. She contained her annoyance because she was trying as hard as he was to find someone.

  "We're being sporty tonight, I see," Barbara said as she got in the car.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," he said. "I will prove that, if you give me a chance."

  "It's all right," she said.

  Impulsively, and although he knew he wasn't, in the turtleneck, dressed for it, he decided on the Ristorante Alfredo. He could count, he thought, on having some snotty Wop waiter, six months out of a Neapolitan slum, look haughtily down his nose at him.

  It started going bad before he got that far.

  An acne-faced punk in the parking garage gave him trouble about parking the Jaguar himself. It had taken him, literally, a year to find an unblemished, rust-free right front fender for the XK-120, and no sooner had he got it on, and had, finally, the whole car lacquered (20 coats) properly than a parking valet who looked like this one's idiot uncle scraped it along a concrete block wall.