Men In Blue

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Well, they took my fingerprints, and are going to check me out with the FBI, and there’s some kind of background investigation they’ll conduct here, but for all practical purposes, yes, that’s it.”

  “I wonder how your mother is going to react to this?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said.

  “She lost a husband who was a policeman,” Brewster Payne said. “That’s going to be on her mind.”

  Matt grunted.

  “I want to do it, Dad, at least to try it.”

  “You’ve considered, of course, that you might not like it? I don’t know what they do with rookie policemen, of course, but I would suspect it’s like anything else, that you start out doing the unpleasant things.”

  “I didn’t really want to go in the marines, Dad,” Matt said. “Not until after they told me they didn’t want me, anyway. It was just something you did, like go to college. But I really want to be a cop.”

  Brewster Payne cocked his head thoughtfully and made a grunting noise.

  “Well, I don’t like it, and I won’t be a hypocrite and say I do,” Brewster Payne said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” Matt said. “I sort of hoped you would understand.”

  “The terms are not mutually exclusive,” Payne said. “I do understand, and I don’t like it. Would you like to hear what I really think?”

  “Please.”

  “I think that you will become a police officer, and because this is your nature, you will do the very best you can. And I think in ... say a year . . . that you will conclude you don’t really want to spend the rest of your life that way. If that happens, and you do decide to go to law school, or do something entirely different—”

  “Then it wouldn’t be wasted, is that what you mean?” Matt interrupted.

  “I was about to say the year would be very valuable to you,” Brewster Payne said. “Now that I think about it, far more valuable than a year in Europe, which was a carrot I was considering dangling in front of your nose to talk you out of this.”

  “That’s a very tempting carrot,” Matt said.

  “The offer remains open,” Payne said. “But to tell you the truth, I would be disappointed in you if you took it. It remains open because of your mother.”

  “Yeah,” Matt said, exhaling.

  “And also for my benefit,” Brewster Payne said. “When your brothers and sister come to me, and they will, crying ‘Dad, how could you let him do that?’ I will be able to respond that I did my best to talk you out of it, even including a bribe of a year in Europe.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about them,” Matt said.

  “I suggest you had better. You can count, I’m sure, on your sister trying to reason with you, and when that fails, screaming and breaking things.”

  Matt chuckled.

  “I will advance the proposition, which I happen to believe, that what you’re doing is both understandable, and with a little bit of luck, might turn out to be a very profitable thing for you to do.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said.

  Brewster Payne stood up and offered his hand to Matt.

  Matt started to take it, but stopped. They looked at each other, and then Brewster Payne opened his arms, and Matt stepped into them, and they hugged each other.

  “Dad, you’re great,” Matt said.

  “I know,” Brewster Payne said. He thought, I don’t care who his father was; this is my own, beloved, son.

  ****

  When Peter Wohl walked into Homicide, Detective Jason Washington signaled that Captain Henry C. Quaire, commanding officer of the Homicide Division, was in his office and wordlessly asked if he should tell him Wohl was outside.

  Wohl shook his head, no, and mimed drinking a cup of coffee. Washington went to a Mr. Coffee machine, poured coffee, and then, still without speaking, made gestures asking Wohl if he wanted cream or sugar. Wohl shook his head again, no, and Washington carried the coffee to him. Wohl nodded his thanks, and Washington bowed solemnly.

  “We should paint our faces white,” Wohl said, chuckling, “and set up on the sidewalk.”

  “Well, we’d probably make more money doing that than we do on the job,” Washington said. “Mimes probably take more home in their begging baskets every day than we do in a week.”

  Wohl chuckled, and then asked, “Who’s in there with him?”

  “Mitell,” Washington said. “You hear about that job? The old Italian guy?”

  Wohl shook his head no.

  “Well, he died. We just found out—Mitell told me as he went in that he just got the medical examiner’s report— of natural causes. But his wife was broke, and didn’t have enough money to bury him the way she thought he was entitled to be buried. So she dragged him into the basement, wrapped him in Saran Wrap, and waited for the money to come in. That was three months ago. A guy from the gas works smelled him, and called the cops.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Wohl said.

  “The old lady can’t understand why everybody’s so upset,” Washington said. “After all, it was her basement and her husband.”

  “Oh, God.” Wohl laughed, and Washington joined him, and then Washington said what had just popped into Wohl’s mind.

  “Why are we laughing?”

  “Otherwise, we’d go crazy,” Wohl said.

  “How did I do with the TV lady?” Washington asked.

  “She told me she thought you were a very nice man, Jason,” Wohl said.

  “I thought she was a very nice lady,” Washington said. “She looks even better in real life than she does on the tube.”

  “I don’t suppose anything has happened?” Wohl asked.

  “Gerald Vincent Gallagher’s under a rock someplace,” Washington said. “He’ll have to come out sooner or later. I’ll let you know the minute I get anything.”

  “Who’s got the Nelson job?” Wohl asked.

  “Tony Harris,” Washington said. “Know him?”

  Wohl nodded.

  Detective Jason Washington thought that he was far better off, the turn of the wheel, so to speak, than was Detective Tony Harris, to whom the wheel had given the faggot hacking job.

  The same special conditions prevailed, the close supervision from above, though for different reasons. The special interest in the Moffitt job came because Dutch was a cop, and it came from within the department. If Dutch hadn’t been a cop, and the TV lady hadn’t been there when he got shot, the press wouldn’t really have given a damn. It would have been a thirty-second story on the local TV news, and the story would probably have been buried in the back pages of the newspapers.

  But the Nelson job had everything in it that would keep it on the TV and in the newspapers for a long time. For one thing, it was gory. Whoever had done in Nelson had been over the edge; they’d really chopped up the poor sonofabitch. That in itself would have been enough to make a big story about it; the public likes to read about “brutal murders.” But Nelson was rich, the son of a big shot. He lived in a luxurious apartment. And there was the (interesting coincidence) tie-in with the TV lady. She’d found the body, and since everybody figured they knew her from the TV, it was as if someone they knew personally had found it.

  And so far, they didn’t know who did it. Everybody could take a vicarious chill from the idea of having somebody break into an apartment and chop somebody up with knives. And if it came out that Jerome Nelson was homosexual, that would make it an even bigger story. Jason Washington didn’t think it would come out (the father owned a newspaper and a TV station, and it seemed logical that out of respect for him, the other newspapers and TV stations would soft-pedal that); but if it did, what the papers would have was sexual perversion as well as a brutal murder among the aristocracy, and they would milk that for all they could get out of it.

  But that wasn’t Tony Harris’s real problem, as Jason Washington saw it. Harris’s real problem was his sergeant, Bill Chedister, who spent most of his time with his nose up Lieutenant Ed DelRaye’s ass, and,
more important, DelRaye himself. So far as Washington was concerned, DelRaye was an ignorant loudmouth, who was going to take the credit for whatever Tony Harris did right, and see that Harris got the blame for the investigation not going as fast as the brass thought it should go.

  Washington thought that what happened between DelRaye and the TV woman was dumb, for a number of reasons, starting with the basic one that you learn more from witnesses if you don’t piss them off. Threatening to break down her door and calling for a wagon to haul her to the Roundhouse was even dumber.

  In a way, Washington was sorry that Peter Wohl had shown up and calmed things down. DelRaye thus escaped the wrath that would have been dumped on him by everybody from the commissioner down for getting the TV station justifiably pissed off at the cops.

  Washington also thought that it was interesting that DelRaye had let it get around that Wohl had been “half-drunk” when he had shown up. Jason Washington had known Wohl ten, fifteen years, and he had never seen him drunk in all that time. But accusing Wohl of having been drunk was just the sort of thing a prick like DelRaye would do, especially if he himself had been. And if DelRaye had been drunk, that would explain his pissing off the TV woman.

  Washington admired Wohl, for a number of reasons. He liked the way he dressed, for one thing, but, far more important, he thought Wohl was smart. Jason Washington habitually studied the promotion lists, not only to see who was on them, but to see who had done well. Peter Wohl had been second on his sergeant’s list, first on his lieutenant’s list, third on his captain’s list, and first again on the staff inspector’s list. That was proof enough that Wohl was about as smart a cop as they came, but also that he had kept his party politics in order, which sometimes wasn’t easy for someone who was an absolutely straight arrow, as Washington believed Wohl to be.

  Peter Wohl was Jason Washington’s idea of what a good senior police officer should be; there was no question that Wohl (and quickly, because the senior ranks of the Department would soon be thinned out by retirement) would rise to chief inspector, and probably even higher.

  As Wohl put his coffee cup to his lips, Captain Quaire’s office door opened. Detective Mitell, a slight, wiry young man, came out, and Quaire, a stocky, muscular man of about forty, appeared in it. He spotted Wohl.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” he said. “I expect you want to see me?”

  “When you get a free minute, Henry,” Wohl said.

  “Let me get a cup of coffee,” Captain Quaire said, “and I’ll be right with you.”

  Wohl waited until Quaire had carried his coffee mug into his office and then followed him in. Quaire put his mug on his desk, and then went to the door and closed it.

  “I was told you would be around, Peter,” he said, waving toward a battered chair. “But before we start that, let me thank you for last night.”

  “Thank me for what last night?” Wohl asked.

  “I understand a situation developed on the Nelson job that could have been awkward.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Quaire didn’t reply directly.

  “My cousin Paul’s with the Crime Lab. He was there,” he said. “I had a word with Lieutenant DelRaye. I tried to make the point that knocking down witnesses’ doors and hauling them away in a wagon is not what we of the modern enlightened law-enforcement community think of as good public relations.”

  Wohl chuckled, relieved that Quaire had heard about the incident from his own sources; after telling the commissioner what he had told him was off the record, he would have been disappointed if the commissioner had gone right to DelRaye’s commanding officer with it.

  “The lady was a little upset, but nothing got out of control.”

  “Was he drunk, Peter?”

  I wonder if he got that, too, from his cousin Paul? And is Cousin Paul a snitch, or did Quaire tell him to keep his eye on DelRaye?

  “No, I don’t think so,” Wohl replied, and added a moment later, “No, I’m sure he wasn’t.”

  But I was. How hypocritical I am, in that circumstance. I wonder if anybody saw it, and turned me in?

  “Okay,” Quaire said. “That’s good enough for me, Peter. Now what can I do for you to keep the commissioner off your back and Chief Lowenstein off mine?”

  “Lowenstein said something to you about me? You said you expected me?” Wohl asked.

  “Lowenstein said, quote, by order of the commissioner, you would be keeping an eye on things,” Quaire said.

  “Only as a spectator,” Wohl said. “I’m to finesse both Miss Dutton and Mr. Nelson. I’m to keep Nelson up to date on how that job is going, and to make sure Miss Dutton is treated with all the courtesy an ordinary citizen of Philadelphia, who also happens to be on TV twice a day, can expect.”

  Quaire smiled. “That, the girl, might be very interesting,” he said. “She’s a looker, Peter. Nelson may be difficult. He’s supposed to be a real sonofabitch.”

  “Do you think the Commissioner would rather have him mad at Peter Wohl than at Ted Czernick?” Wohl said. “I fell into this, Henry. I responded to the call at the Waikiki. My bad luck, I was on Roosevelt Boulevard.”

  “Well, what do you need?”

  “I’m going from here to see Nelson,” Wohl said. “I’d like to talk to the detective who has the job.”

  “Sure.”

  “If it’s all right with you, Henry, I’d like to ask him to tell me when they need Miss Dutton in here. I don’t want anybody saying, ‘Get in the car, honey.’ “

  “Tony Harris got the Nelson job,” Quaire said.

  “I heard. Good man, from what I hear,” Wohl said.

  “Tony Harris is at the Nelson apartment,” Quaire said. “You want me to get him in here?”

  “I really have to talk to him before I see Nelson. Maybe the thing for me to do is meet him over there.”

  “You want to do that, I’ll call him and tell him to wait for you.”

  “Please, Henry,” Wohl said.

  ****

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl’s first reaction when he saw Detective Anthony C. Harris was anger.

  Tony Harris was in his early thirties, a slight and wiry man already starting to bald, the smooth youthful skin on his face already starting to crease and line. He was wearing a shirt and tie, and a sports coat and slacks that had probably come from the racks of some discount clothier several years before.

  It was a pleasant spring day and Detective Harris had elected to wait for Inspector Wohl outside the crime scene, which had already begun to stink sickeningly of blood, on the street. Specifically, when Wohl passed through the Stockton Place barrier, Harris was sitting on the hood of Wohl’s Jaguar XK-120, which was parked, top down, where he had left it last night.

  There were twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer on the XK-120’s hood, applied, one coat at a time, with a laborious rubdown between each coat, by Peter Wohl himself. Only an ignorant asshole, with no appreciation of the finer things of life, would plant his gritty ass on twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer.

  Wohl screeched to a stop by the Jaguar, leaned across the seat, rolled down the window, and returned Tony Harris’s pleasant smile by snapping, “Get your ass off my hood!”

  Then he drove twenty feet farther down the cobble-stoned street and stopped the LTD.

  Looking a little sheepish, Harris walked to the LTD as Wohl got out.

  “Jesus Christ, Tony!” Wohl fumed, still angry. “There’s twenty coats of lacquer on there!”

  “Sorry,” Harris mumbled. “I didn’t think.”

  “Obviously,” Wohl said.

  Wohl’s anger died as quickly as it had flared. Tony Harris looked beat and worn down. Without consciously calling it up from his memory, what Wohl knew about Harris came into his mind. First came the important impression he had filed away, which was that Harris was a good cop, more important, one of the brighter Homicide detectives. Then he remembered hearing that after nine years of marriage and four kids, Mrs. Harris had ca
ught Tony straying from the marital bed and run him before a judge who had awarded her both ears and the tail.

  If I were Tony Harris, Peter Wohl thought, who has to put in sixty, sixty-five hours a week to make enough money to pay child support with enough left over to pay for an “efficiency” apartment for myself, and some staff inspector, no older than I am, pulls rank and jumps my ass for scratching the precious paint on his precious sports car, I would be pissed. And rightly so.

  “Hell, Tony, I’m sorry,” Wohl said, offering his hand. “But I painted that sonofabitch by myself. All twenty coats.”

  “I was wrong,” Harris said. “I just wasn’t thinking. Or I wasn’t thinking about a paint job.”

  “I guess what I was really pissed about was my own stupidity,” Wohl said. “I know better than using my own car on the job. Right after I saw you, I asked myself, ‘Christ, what if it had rained last night?’ “

  “You took that TV woman out through the basement in her own car?” Harris asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It took DelRaye some time to figure that out,” Harris said. “Talk about pissed.”

  “Well, I’m sorry he was,” Wohl said. “But it was a vicious circle, the more pissed he got at her, the more pissed she got at him. I had to break it, and that seemed to be the best way to do it. The whole department would have paid for it for a long time.”

  “I think maybe he was pissed because he knew his ass was showing,” Harris said. “You can’t push a dame like that around. She file a complaint?”

  “No,” Wohl said.

  Harris shrugged.

  “Did Captain Quaire say anything to you about me?” Wohl asked.

  “He said it came from upstairs that you were to be in on it,” Harris said.

  “I’ve been temporarily transferred to the Charm Squad,” Wohl said. “I’m to keep Miss Dutton happy, and to report daily to Mr. Nelson’s father on the progress of your investigation.”

  Harris chuckled.

  “What have you got, Tony?”

  “He was a fag, I guess you know?”

  “I met him,” Wohl said.

  “I want to talk to his boyfriend,” Harris said. “We’re looking for him. Very large black guy, big enough, strong enough, to cut up Nelson the way he was. His name, we think, is Pierre St. Maury. His birth certificate probably says John Jones, but that’s what he called himself.”