Men In Blue

by W. E. B Griffin

  The young policeman leaned in the open front door. “Take the first right,” he ordered Newt. “Someone there will assign you a place in the procession.”

  Patricia Payne took Matt’s arm and they walked up the short walk to the church door. Both sides of the flagstone walk were lined with policemen.

  A lieutenant standing near the door with a clipboard in his hands approached them.

  “May I have your invitations, please?” he asked.

  “We don’t have any invitations,” Matt said.

  “Our name is Payne,” Patricia said. “This is my son, Matthew. He is Captain Moffitt’s nephew.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “Family.”

  He flipped sheets of paper on his clipboard, and ran his fingers down a list of typewritten names. His face grew troubled.

  “Ma’am,” he said, uncomfortably, “I’ve only got one Payne on my list.”

  “Then your list is wrong,” Matt said, bluntly.

  “Let me see,” Patricia said, and looked at the clipboard. Her name was not on the list headed “FAMILY— Pews 2 through 6, Right Side.” Nor were Brewster’s, or Foster’s, or B.C.’s, or Amy’s. Just Matt’s.

  “Well, no problem,” Patricia said. “Matt, you go sit with your Aunt Jean and your grandmother, and we’ll sit somewhere else.”

  “You’re as much family as I am,” Matt said.

  “No, Matt, not really,” Patricia Payne said.

  “Is there some problem?” Brewster Payne asked, as he stepped closer.

  “No,” Patricia said. “They just have Matt sitting with the Moffitts. We’ll sit somewhere else.”

  The lieutenant looked even more uncomfortable.

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid that all the seats are reserved.”

  “What does that mean?” Patricia asked, calmly.

  “Ma’am, they’re reserved for people with invitations,” he said.

  “Mother,” Amy said. “Let’s just go!”

  “Perhaps that would be best, Pat,” Brewster Payne said.

  “Be quiet, the both of you,” Patricia snapped. “Lieutenant, is Chief Inspector Coughlin around here somewhere?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “He’s a pallbearer. I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

  “Get him,” Patricia said, flatly.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I said, go get him, tell him I’m here and I want to see him,” Patricia said, her voice raised just a little.

  “Pat . . .” Brewster said.

  “Brewster, shut up!” Patricia said. “Do what I say, Lieutenant. Matt, I told you to go inside and sit with your Aunt Jean.”

  “Do what she says, Matt,” Brewster Payne ordered.

  Matt looked at him, then shrugged, and went inside.

  “Would you please stand to the side?” the lieutenant said. “I’m afraid we’re holding things up.”

  “This is humiliating,” Amy said, softly.

  The lieutenant caught the eye of a sergeant, and motioned him over.

  “See if you can find Chief Coughlin,” the lieutenant ordered. “Tell him that a Mrs. Payne wants to see him, here.”

  Four other mourners filed into Saint Dominic’s after giving their invitations to the lieutenant.

  Then two stout, gray-haired women, dressed completely in black, with black lace shawls over their heads, walked slowly up the flagstones, accompanied by an expensively dressed muscular young man with long, elaborately combed hair.

  “May I have your invitations, please?” the lieutenant asked politely.

  “No invitations,” the muscular young man said. “Friends of the family. This is Mrs. Turpino, and this is Mrs. Savarese.”

  The lieutenant now took a good look at the expensively dressed young man.

  “And you’re Angelo Turpino, right?”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant,” Turpino said. “I saw Captain Moffitt just minutes before this terrible thing happened, and I’ve come to pay my last respects.”

  The lieutenant, with an almost visible effort to keep control of himself, went through the sheets on his clipboard.

  “You’re on here,” he said. “Won’t you please go inside? Tell the usher ‘friends of the family.’ “

  “Thank you very much,” Angelo Turpino said. He took the women’s arms. “Come on, Mama,” he said. He led them into Saint Dominic’s.

  The sergeant whom the lieutenant had sent after Chief Inspector Coughlin came back. “He’ll be right here, Lieutenant,” he said. “He’s on the phone.”

  The lieutenant nodded.

  “Was that who I thought it was just going in?” the sergeant asked.

  “That was Angelo Turpino,” the lieutenant said. “And his mother. And a Mrs. Savarese. ‘Friends of the family.’ “

  “Probably Vincenzo’s wife,” the sergeant said. “They was on the list?”

  “Yes, they were,” the lieutenant said.

  “I’ll be damned,” the sergeant said.

  “Mother,” Amy Payne, who had heard all this, and who was fully aware that Vincenzo Savarese was almost universally recognized to be the head of the mob in Philadelphia, exploded, “I refuse to stand here and see you humiliated like this ...”

  Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin came around the corner of the church. He kissed Patricia as he offered his hand to Brewster Payne.

  “What can I do for you, darling?” he asked.

  “You can get us into the church,” Patricia Payne said. “I am not on the family list, nor do we have invitations.”

  “My God!” Coughlin said, and turned to the lieutenant, who handed him his clipboard.

  “You keep that,” Coughlin said. “And you personally usher the Paynes inside and seat them wherever they want to sit.”

  “Yes, sir. Chief ...”

  “Just do it, Lieutenant,” Coughlin said. “Brewster, I’m sorry . . .”

  “We know what happened, Dennis,” Brewster Payne said. “Thank you for your courtesy.”

  ****

  The pallbearers waited to be summoned behind Saint Dominic’s, in a small grassy area between the church and the fence of the church cemetery.

  Wohl took the opportunity to speak to the Jersey trooper lieutenant.

  “I’m Peter Wohl,” he said, walking up to him and extending his hand.

  “Bob McGrory,” the lieutenant said. “I heard Dutch talk about you.”

  “All bad?”

  “He said you had all the makings of a good Highway Patrolman, and then went bad and took the examination for lieutenant.”

  “Dutch really liked Highway,” Wohl said. “And they liked him. One of his sergeants rolled on the ‘assist officer’ call, found out that Dutch was involved, and called in every Highway Patrol car in the city.”

  “Dutch was a good guy. Goddamned shame, this,” McGrory said.

  “Yeah,” Wohl agreed. “Mind if I ask you something else?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got a homicide. Son of a very important man. His car, a Jaguar, turned up missing. Then I heard they found it in Jersey. You know anything about that?”

  “Major Knotts found it,” McGrory said. “On his way over here last night. It was on a dirt road off Three Twenty-two.”

  “Do you know if they turned up anything? Besides the car?” Wohl asked.

  “Knotts told me that when they got the NCIC hit, and then heard from you guys, he ordered the mobile crime lab in. And they were supposed to have people out there this morning, when it was light, to have a look around the area.”

  “You usually do that when you find a hot car?”

  “No, but the word was ‘homicide,’ “ McGrory said. Then he added, “Inspector, if they found anything interesting, I’m sure they would have passed it on to you. And probably to me, too. I mean, they knew Dutch and I were close.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they would have,” Wohl said, and started to say something else when someone spoke his name.

  He turned
and saw Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick’s aide.

  “Hello, Jank,” Wohl said. “This is Lieutenant McGrory. Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick’s indispensable right-hand man.”

  The two shook hands.

  “Inspector Wohl,” Jankowitz said, formally, “Commissioner Czernick would like to see you in his office at two this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” Wohl said. “I’ll be there.”

  Jankowitz started to say something, then changed his mind. He smiled, nodded at McGrory, and walked away.

  Watching him go, Wohl’s eyes focused on the street. He saw a roped-off area in which a number of television camera crew trucks were parked. And he saw Louise. She was standing on a truck, and looking at the area through binoculars. When they seemed to be pointed in his direction, he raised his hand to shoulder level and waved. He wondered if she saw him.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw his father. And then his mother and Barbara Crowley.

  “Hello, Dad,” Peter said. “Lieutenant McGrory, this is my father, Chief Inspector Wohl, Retired. And my mother, and Miss Crowley.”

  Barbara surprised him by kissing him.

  “When we heard you were going to be a pallbearer,” Peter’s mother said, “I asked Barbara if she wanted to come. Gertrude Moffitt, before she knew you were going to be a pallbearer, told me she’d given us three family seats, and since you wouldn’t need one now, I asked Barbara. I mean she’s almost family, you know what I mean.”

  “That was a good idea,” Peter said.

  “Got a minute, Peter?” Chief Inspector August Wohl, Retired, said, and took Peter’s arm and led him out of hearing.

  “You’re in trouble,” Peter’s father said. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “I’m not in trouble, Dad,” Peter said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “What’s that got to do with being in trouble? The word is around that both the Polack and the mayor are after your scalp.”

  “They think I talked to Mickey O’Hara and said something I shouldn’t. I haven’t seen O’Hara in ten days. I don’t know who ran off at the mouth, but it wasn’t me. And I can’t help it if Nelson is pissed at me. I didn’t say anything to him, either, that I shouldn’t.”

  “The mayor will throw you to the fish if he thinks he will get the Ledger off his back. And so will the Polack. You better get this straightened out, Peter, and quick.”

  There was a burst of organ music from Saint Dominic’s. The man from Marshutz & Sons began to collect the pallbearers.

  When he was formed in ranks beside Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl glanced at the street again, at the TV trucks. He saw Louise again, and was sure that she was looking at him, and that she had seen Barbara kiss him.

  She was waving her hand slowly back and forth, as if she knew he was watching her, and wanted to wave goodbye.

  EIGHTEEN

  One of their own had died in the line of duty, and police officers from virtually every police department in a one-hundred-mile circle around Philadelphia had come to honor him. They had come in uniform, and driving their patrol cars, and the result was a monumental traffic jam, despite the best efforts of more than twenty Philadelphia Traffic Division officers to maintain order.

  When Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl made their careful way down the brownstone steps of Saint Dominic’s Church (Dutch Moffitt’s casket was surprisingly heavy) toward the hearse waiting at the curb, there were three lines of cars, parked bumper to bumper, prepared to escort Captain Moffitt to his last resting place.

  Their path to the curb was lined with Highway Patrol officers, saluting. There was an additional formation of policemen on the street, and the police band, and the color guard. To the right, behind barriers, was the press. Peter looked for, but did not see, Louise Dutton.

  Both Peter and Dennis Coughlin grunted with the effort as they raised the end of the casket to the level of the hearse bed, and set it gently on the chrome-plated rollers in the floor. They pushed it inside, and a man from Marshutz & Sons flipped levers that would keep it from moving on the way to the cemetery.

  The hearse would be preceded now by the limousine of the archbishop of Philadelphia and his entourage of lesser clerics, including Dutch’s parish priest, the rector of Saint Dominic’s, and the police chaplain. Ahead of the hearse was a police car carrying a captain of the Traffic Division, sort of an en route command car. And out in front were twenty Highway Patrol motorcycles.

  Next came Dennis V. Coughlin’s Oldsmobile, with the limousine carrying the rest of the pallbearers behind it. Then came the flower cars. There had been so many flowers that the available supply of flower cars in Philadelphia and Camden had been exhausted. It had been decided that half a dozen vans would be loaded with flowers and sent to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery ahead of the procession, both to cut down the length of the line of flower cars, and so that there would be flowers in place when the procession got there.

  The flower vans would travel with other vehicles, mostly buses, preceding the funeral procession, the band, the honor guard, the firing squad, and the police officers who would line the path the pallbearers would take from the cemetery road to the grave site.

  Behind the flower cars in the funeral procession were the limousines carrying the family, followed by the mayor’s Cadillac, two cars full of official dignitaries, and then the police commissioner’s car, and those of chief inspectors. Next came the cars of “official” friends (those on the invitation list), then the cars of other friends, and finally the cars of the police officers who had come to pay their respects.

  It would take a long time just to load the family, dignitaries, and official friends. As soon as the last official-friends car had been loaded, the procession would start to move away from the church.

  “Tom,” Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered from the backseat of the Oldsmobile, “anything on the radio?”

  “I’ll check, sir,” Sergeant Lenihan said. He took the microphone from the glove compartment.

  “C-Charlie One,” he said.

  “C-Charlie One,” radio replied.

  “We’re at Saint Dominic’s, about to leave for Holy Sepulchre,” Lenihan said. “Anything for us?”

  “Nothing, C-Charlie One,” radio said.

  “Check for me, please, Tom,” Wohl said. “Seventeen.”

  “Anything for Isaac Seventeen?” Lenihan said.

  “Yes, wait a minute. They were trying to reach him a couple of minutes ago.”

  Wohl leaned forward on the seat to better hear the speaker.

  “Isaac Seventeen is to contact Homicide,” the radio said.

  “Thank you,” Lenihan said.

  “There’s a phone over there,” Coughlin said, pointing to a pay phone on the wall of a florist’s shop across the street. “You’ve got time.”

  Peter trotted to the phone, fed it a dime, and called Homicide.

  “This is Inspector Wohl,” he said, when a Homicide detective answered.

  “Oh, yeah, Inspector. Wait just a second.” There was a pause, and then the detective, obviously reading a note, went on: “The New Jersey state police have advised us of the discovery of a murder victim meeting the description of Pierre St. Maury, also known as Errol F. Watson. The body was found near the recovered stolen Jaguar automobile. The identification is not confirmed. Photographs and fingerprints of St. Maury are being sent to New Jersey. Got that?”

  “Read it again,” Wohl asked, and when it had been, said, “If there’s anything else in the next hour or so, I’m with C-Charlie One.”

  He hung up without waiting for a reply and ran back to Chief Inspector Coughlin’s Oldsmobile.

  “They found—the Jersey state troopers—found a body that’s probably St. Maury near Nelson’s car,” he reported.

  “Interesting,” Coughlin said.

  “The suspect they had in Homicide said there was talk on the street that two guys we
re going to get the key to Nelson’s apartment from his boyfriend,” Wohl said. “To see what they could steal.”

  There was no response from Coughlin except a grunt.

  The Oldsmobile started to move.

  As they passed the cordoned-off area for the press, Wohl saw Louise. She was talking into a microphone, not on camera, but as if she were taking notes.

  Or, Peter thought, she didn’t ‘t want to see me.

  ****

  More than three hundred police cars formed the tail of Captain Richard C. Moffitt’s funeral procession. They all had their flashing lights turned on. By the time the last visiting mourner dropped his gearshift lever in “D” and started moving, the head of the procession was well over a mile and a half ahead of him.

  The long line of limousines and flower cars and police cars followed the hearse and His Eminence the Archbishop down Torresdale Avenue to Rhawn Street, out Rhawn to Oxford Avenue, turned right onto Hasbrook, right again onto Central Avenue, and then down Central to Tookany Creek Parkway, and then down the parkway to Cheltenham Avenue, and then out Cheltenham to the main entrance to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at Cheltenham and Easton Road.

  Each intersection along the route was blocked for the procession, and it stayed blocked until the last car (another Philadelphia Traffic Division car) had passed. Then the officers blocking that intersection jumped in their cars (or later, in Cheltenham Township, on their motorcycles) and raced alongside, and past, the slow-moving procession to block another intersection.

  Dennis V. Coughlin lit a cigar in the backseat of the Oldsmobile almost as soon as they started moving, and sat puffing thoughtfully on it, slumped down in the seat.

  He didn’t say a word until the fence of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery could be seen, in other words for over half an hour. Then he reached forward and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the back of the front seat.

  “Peter, as I understand this,” he said, “we put Dutch on whatever they call that thing that lowers the casket into the hole. Then we march off” and take up position far enough away from the head of the casket to make room for the archbishop and the other priests.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter agreed.