Men In Blue

by W. E. B Griffin

  As Peter reached for the switch that would activate the microphone hidden in the light fixture, and permit him to hear what was being said, Captain Quaire came into the room. Peter took his hand away from the switch.

  “What’s going on?” Peter asked. “Is that Pierre St. Maury?”

  “No,” Quaire said. “His name is Kostmayer. But Porterfield thought he was, and brought him in.”

  “Porterfield is the other guy?”

  Quaire nodded and grunted. “Narcotics. Good cop. He’s high on the detective’s list and wants to come over here when he gets promoted.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “This guy was so upset that Porterfield thought he was Maury that Porterfield thinks he knows something about the Nelson job.”

  “Does he?” Wohl asked.

  “We are about to find out,” Quaire said, throwing the microphone switch. “He already gave us Mr. Pierre St. Maury’s real name—Errol F. Watson—and address. I already sent people to see if they can pick him up at home.”

  Wohl watched the interrogation for fifteen minutes. Admiringly. Tony Harris and Porterfield worked well together, as if they had done so before. He wondered if they had. They pulled one little thing at a time from Kostmayer, sometimes sternly calling him by his last name, sometimes, kindly, calling him “Peter,” one picking up the questioning when the other stopped.

  It was slow. Kostmayer was reluctant to talk. It was obvious he was more afraid of other people than his own troubles with the law.

  “What have you got on him?” Wohl asked.

  “Couple of minor arrests,” Quaire said. “He’s a male prostitute. The usual stuff. Possession of controlled substances. Rolling people.”

  Kostmayer finally said something interesting.

  “Well, I heard this,” he said, seemingly on the edge of tears. “I only heard it; I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

  “We understand, Peter,” Tony Harris said, kindly. “What did you hear?”

  “Well, there was talk, and you know people just talk, that a certain two men who knew Pierre, and knew that he was, you know, friends, with Jerome Nelson, were going to get the key to the apartment—you know, the Nelson apartment—from him.”

  “Why were they going to do that, Peter?” Tony Harris asked.

  “What certain two people, Kostmayer?” Detective Porterfield demanded.

  “Well, they were, you know, going to take things,” Kostmayer said.

  “What were their names, Kostmayer?” Porterfield said, walking to him and lowering his face to his. “I’m losing my patience with you.”

  “I don’t know their names,” Kostmayer said.

  He’s lying, Peter Wohl thought, at the exact moment Porterfield put that thought in words: “Bullshit!”

  Wohl looked at Quaire, who had his lower lip protruding thoughtfully.

  Then Wohl looked at his watch.

  “Hell, I have to get out of here,” he said. “I’m due at Marshutz & Sons in fifteen minutes.”

  “You going to be a pallbearer? Is that why you’re wearing your uniform?”

  “Yeah. And Henry, I need a mourning strip for my badge. Where can I get one?”

  “I’ve got one,” Quaire said, taking Wohl’s arm and leading him to. his office. There, he took a small piece of black elastic hatband material from an envelope and stretched it over Wohl’s badge.

  “I appreciate it, Henry. I’ll get it back to you.”

  “Why don’t you?” Quaire said. “Then the next time, God forbid, we need one, you’ll know where to find one.”

  Wohl nodded.

  “I’ll let you know whatever else they find out, Peter,” Quaire said.

  “As soon as you get it, please. Even at Dutch’s funeral.”

  “Sure,” Quaire said.

  Wohl shook Quaire’s hand and left.

  ****

  Brewster Cortland Payne II had had some difficulty persuading Amy, Foster, and B.C. to attend the funeral of Captain Richard C. Moffitt.

  Amy had caved in more quickly, when her father told her that her mother felt the loss more than she was showing, and that while she wouldn’t ask, would really appreciate having another female along.

  Foster and B.C. were a little more difficult. When Brewster Payne raised the subject, he saw his sons were desperately searching for a reason not to go.

  Finally, B.C. protested, truthfully, that he had “seen the man only once or twice in my life.”

  “He was your brother’s uncle, Brew,” Brewster Payne said, “and your mother’s brother-in-law.”

  “You know,” Foster said, thoughtfully, “the only time I ever think that Mother isn’t my—what’s the word?— natural mother is when something like this comes up.”

  “I’m sure she would accept that as a compliment,” Brewster Payne said.

  “Or that Matt isn’t really my brother,” Foster went on. “I presume you did try to talk him out of this becoming-a-policeman nonsense?”

  “First things first,” Brewster Payne said. “Matt is your brother, de facto and de jure, and I’m sure you won’t say anything about something like that to him.”

  “Of course not,” Foster said.

  “I already told him,” B.C. said, “that I thought he was nuts.”

  Out of the mouth of the babe, Brewster C. Payne thought. He said: “To answer your second question, no, I didn’t really try to talk Matt out of becoming a policeman. For one thing, I learned of it after the fact, and for another, he’s your mother’s son, and as you have learned there are times when neither of them can be dissuaded from what they want to do. And, finally, son, I don’t agree that it’s nonsense. I told him, and I believe, that it can be a very valuable learning experience for him.”

  “Amy says that he was psychologically castrated when he failed the marine corps physical, and is becoming a policeman to prove his manhood,” B.C. said.

  “She talks to you like that? When I was a boy—”

  “All the girls you knew were virgins who didn’t even know what ‘castrated’ meant,” Foster said, laughing. “But Amy has a point, and she’s really concerned.”

  “I don’t think I quite understand,” Brewster Payne said.

  “What if Matt can’t make it as a policeman? He really doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for. What if he fails? Double castration, so to speak.”

  “I have confidence that Matt can do anything he sets his mind to do,” Brewster Payne said. “And I’m beginning to wonder if sending your sister to medical school was such a good idea. I’m afraid that we can expect henceforth that she will ascribe a Freudian motive to everything any one of us does, from entering a tennis tournament to getting married.”

  ****

  Patricia and Amelia Payne came down the wide staircase from the second floor. They were dressed almost identically, in simple black dresses, strings of pearls, black hats, and gloves.

  Brewster Payne had what he thought a moment later was an unkind thought. He wondered how many men were lucky enough to have wives who were better looking than their daughters.

  “Where’s Matt?” Patricia Payne asked.

  The two men shrugged.

  Amelia Payne turned and shouted up the stairs.

  “Matty, for God’s sake, will you come?”

  “Keep your goddamned pants on, Amy,” Matt’s voice replied.

  “It is such a joy for a father to see what refined and well-mannered children he has raised,” Brewster C. Payne II said.

  Matt came down the stairs two at a time, a moment later, shrugging into a jacket; his tie, untied, hanging loosely around his neck. He looked, Brewster Payne thought, about eighteen years old. And he wondered if Matt really understood what he was getting into with the police, if he could indeed cope with it.

  “Since there’s so many of us,” Patricia said, “I guess we had better go in the station wagon.”

  “I asked Newt to get the black car out,” Brewster Payne said, meeting his wi
fe’s eyes. “And to drive us.”

  “Oh, Brew!” she said.

  “I considered the station wagon,” Brewster Payne said. “And finally decided the black car was the best solution to the problem.”

  “What problem?” Matt asked.

  “How to avoid anything that could possibly upset your grandmother,” Patricia Payne said. “All right, Brew. If you think so, then let’s go.”

  They collected Foster and B.C. from the patio, and then filed outside. Newt, the handyman, who was rarely seen in anything but ancient paint-splattered clothing, was standing, freshly shaved and dressed in a suit, and holding a gray chauffeur’s cap in his hand by the open rear door of a black Cadillac Fleetwood.

  ****

  When Peter Wohl reached the Marshutz & Sons Funeral Home, there were six Highway Patrol motorcycles in the driveway, their riders standing together. Behind them was Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin’s Oldsmobile. Behind that was a Cadillac limousine with a “FUNERAL” flag on its right fender, then a Cadillac hearse, then finally two Ford Highway Patrol cars.

  When Peter drove in, Sergeant Tom Lenihan, Denny Coughlin’s aide, got out of the Olds and held up his hand for Peter to stop.

  “They’re waiting for you inside, Inspector,” he said. “Park your car. After the funeral, there will be cars to bring you all back here.”

  Peter parked the car behind the building beside other police cars, marked and unmarked, and a few privately owned cars, and then walked into the funeral home. The corridor was crowded with uniformed police officers, one of them a New Jersey state trooper lieutenant in a blue-and-gray uniform. Wohl wondered who he was.

  As he walked toward them, Wohl saw that the Blue Room, where Dutch had been laid out for the wake, and which had been full of flowers, was now virtually empty except for the casket itself, which was now closed, and covered with an American flag.

  “We were getting worried about you, Peter,” Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said to him. “The Moffitts left just a couple of minutes ago. I think Jeannie maybe expected you to be here when they closed the coffin.”

  “I took Miss Dutton to identify Gallagher,” Peter replied. “And I just left Homicide. Vice turned up a suspect who seems to know something about why Nelson was killed.”

  “I thought maybe you’d run into the commissioner,” Coughlin said.

  He’s pissed that I ‘m late. Well, to hell with it. I couldn’t ‘t help it.

  “Was the commissioner looking for me?” Peter asked. “I think you could say that, yes,” Coughlin said, sarcastically.

  “Chief, I’m missing something here,” Wohl said. “If I’ve held things up here, I’m really sorry.”

  Coughlin looked at him for a long moment. “You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You haven’t seen the Ledger? Nobody’s shown it to you? Said anything about it?”

  “The Ledger? No, sir.”

  “When was the last time you saw Mickey O’Hara? Or talked to him?”

  “I saw him a week, ten days ago,” Peter said, after some thought. “I ran into him in Wanamaker’s.”

  “Not in the last two, three days? You haven’t seen him, or talked to him?”

  “No, sir,” Peter said, and then started to ask, “Chief—”

  “Now that we’re all here,” an impeccably suited representative of Marshutz & Sons interrupted him, “I’d like to say a few words about what we’re all going to do taking our part in the ceremonies.”

  “You ride from here to Saint Dominic’s with me,” Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered, earning himself a look of annoyance from the funeral director.

  “With one exception,” the man from Marshutz began, “pallbearer positions will reflect the rank of the pallbearer. Chief Inspector Coughlin will be at the right front of the casket, with Staff Inspector Wohl on the left. Immediately behind Chief Inspector Coughlin, the one exception I mentioned, will be Lieutenant McGrory of the New Jersey State Police. From then on, left, right, left, right, positions are assigned by rank. I have had a list typed up . . .”

  ****

  Patrol cars from the Seventh District were on hand to block intersections between Marshutz & Sons and Saint Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church.

  When Dutch Moffitt’s flag-draped casket had been rolled into the hearse, Dennis Coughlin and Peter Wohl walked forward to Coughlin’s Oldsmobile. The Highway Patrol motorcycle men kicked their machines into life and turned on the flashing lights. Then, very slowly, the small convoy pulled away from the funeral home.

  The officers from the Seventh District cars saluted as the hearse rolled past them.

  “Tom, have you got the Ledger up there with you?” Denny Coughlin asked, from the backseat of the Oldsmobile.

  “Yes, sir. And the Bulletin. “

  “Pass them back to Inspector Wohl, would you please, Tom? He hasn’t seen them.”

  When Sergeant Lenihan held the papers up, Wohl leaned forward and took them.

  “You never saw any of that before, Peter?” Coughlin asked, when Wohl had read Mickey O’Hara’s story in the Bulletin and the editorial in the Ledger.

  “No, sir,” Peter said. “Is there anything to it? Did Gallagher get pushed in front of the train?”

  “No, and there are witnesses who saw the whole thing,” Coughlin said. “Unfortunately, they are one cop—Martinez, McFadden’s partner—and the engineer of the elevated train. Both of whom could be expected to lie to protect a cop.”

  “Then what the hell is the Ledger printing crap like that for?”

  “Commissioner Czernick believes it is because Staff Inspector Peter Wohl first had diarrhea of the mouth—that’s a direct quote, Peter—when speaking with Mr. Michael J. O’Hara—”

  “I haven’t spoken to Mickey O’Hara—”

  “Let me finish, Peter,” Coughlin interrupted. “First you had diarrhea of the mouth with Mr. O’Hara, and then you compounded your—another direct quote—incredible stupidity—by antagonizing Arthur J. Nelson, when you were under orders to charm him. Anything to that?”

  “Once again, I haven’t seen Mickey O’Hara, or talked to him, in ten days, maybe more.”

  “But maybe you did piss off Arthur J. Nelson?”

  “I called him late last night to tell him the Jaguar had been found. He asked me where, and I told him— truthfully—that I didn’t know. He was a little sore about that, but I don’t think antagonize is the word.”

  “You didn’t—and for God’s sake tell me if you did— make any cracks about homosexuality, ‘your son the fag,’ something like that?”

  “Sir, I don’t deserve that,” Peter said.

  “That’s how it looks to the commissioner, Peter,” Coughlin said. “And to the mayor, which is worse. He’s going to run again, of course, and when he does, he wants the Ledger to support him.”

  Peter looked out the window. They were still some distance from Saint Dominic’s but the street was lined with parked police cars.

  Dutch, Peter thought, is going to be buried in style.

  “Chief,” Peter said, “all I can do is repeat what I said. I haven’t seen, or spoken to, Mickey O’Hara for more than a week. And I didn’t say anything to Arthur Nelson that I shouldn’t have.”

  Coughlin grunted.

  “For Christ’s sake, I even kept my mouth shut when he tried to tell me his son was Louise’s boyfriend.”

  “ ‘Louise’s boyfriend’?” Coughlin parroted. “When did you get on a first-name basis with her?”

  Peter turned and met Coughlin’s eyes.

  “We’ve become friends, Chief,” he said. “Maybe a little more.”

  “You didn’t say anything to her about the Nelson boy being queer, did you? Could that have got back to Nelson?”

  “She knew about him,” Peter said. “I met him in her apartment.”

  “When was that?”

  “When I went there to bring her to the Roundhouse,” Peter s
aid. “The day Dutch was killed.”

  Out the side window, Peter saw that the lines of police cars were now double-parked. When he looked through the windshield, he could see they were approaching Saint Dominic’s. There was a lot of activity there, although the funeral mass wouldn’t start for nearly an hour.

  “All I know, Peter,” Coughlin said, “is that right now, you’re in the deep shit. You may be—and I think you are— lily white, but the problem is going to be to convince Czernick and the mayor. Right now, you’re at the top of their shit list.”

  The small convoy drove past the church, and then into the church cemetery, and through the cemetery back to the church, finally stopping beside a side door. The pallbearers got out of the limousine and went to the hearse. Coughlin and Wohl joined them, and took Dutch Moffitt’s casket from the hearse and carried it through the side door into the church. Under the direction of the man from Marshutz & Sons, they set it up in the aisle.

  The ornate, Victorian-style church already held a number of people. Peter saw Jeannie Moffitt and Dutch’s kids and Dutch’s mother, and three rows behind them his own mother and father. Ushers—policemen—were escorting more people down the aisles.

  “About—face,” Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin ordered softly, and the pallbearers standing beside the casket turned around. “For-ward, march,” Coughlin said, and they marched back toward the altar, and then turned left, leaving Saint Dominic’s as they had entered it. They would reenter the church as the mass started, as part of the processional, and take places in the first row of pews on the left.

  The nave of the church was full of flowers.

  Peter wondered how much they had all cost, and whether there wasn’t something really sinful in all that money being spent on flowers.

  ****

  Newt Gladstone pulled the Payne Cadillac to the curb in front of Saint Dominic’s. A young police officer with a mourning band crossing his badge opened the door, and Brewster, Patricia, and Foster Payne got out of the backseat as Amy and Matt got out of the front.