W E B Griffin - Badge of Honor 01 - Men In Blue

by Men In Blue(lit)

  It was possible that no one "would notice" that the bullets that would be removed from the body of Unknown White Female Suspect were jacketed. It was unlikely that anyone could have missed the hollow-nosed jacketed bullet in the unfired casing. There would have been trouble.

  "What about the female suspect?" Wohl asked. He could almost hear Natali's relief that he hadn't pressed him about a fifth cartridge.

  "She's a junkie, Inspector," Natali said. "I talked to Sergeant Hobbs, who's at the Medical Examiner's. He said they found needle marks all over her. I called Narcotics and they're going to run people by over there, to see if they can identify her."

  "Well, I don't suppose there's any point in hanging around here," Wohl said.

  Both Lieutenant Sabara and Captain Gaft shook hands with him formally. They had been worried, Wohl knew. He had a reputation for being a straight arrow, and sometimes a prick. Lieutenant Natali just nodded at him.

  ***

  The van with Penny Bakersfield and the tape reached WCBL-TV fifteen minutes after Louise Dutton had walked in, trailed by two cops. There was time enough for News Director Leonard Cohen to get the story out of her, and to decide what he was going to do about it, before they put the tape up on a monitor, and he got a good look at it. It was even better than he hoped. There was a sequence, just long enough, thirty-odd seconds, for what he wanted. It showed Louise being put into her car, driven by a cop, and then following a police car out of the Waikiki Diner parking lot.

  Cohen edited it himself, down to twenty seconds exactly, and then he sat down at his typewriter and wrote the voice-over himself for Penny to read.

  "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."

  He got the station manager into the control room, ran the tape for him, and with less trouble than he thought he would have, got him to agree to run the thirty-second spot during every hourly and half-hourly break until six. They would lose some advertising revenue, but what they had was what, in the olden days, was called a "scoop," or an "exclusive."

  And then he went to help Louise prepare her segment for the six o'clock news. He thought he would have to write that, too, but she had already written it, and handed it to him when he walked up to her. It was good stuff. She had looked kind of flaky, which was understandable, considering the cop had been killed in front of her, but she was apparently tougher than she looked.

  And when they made her up, and lit the set and put her on camera, she got it right the first time. Perfect. Her voice had started to break twice, but she hadn't lost it, and the teary eyes were perfect.

  "You want me to do that again?" she asked. "I broke up."

  "It's fine the way it is," Leonard Cohen said; and he went to her, and repeated that she had done fine, and that what he wanted-what he insisted-was for her to go home and have a stiff drink, and if she needed anything to call.

  Then he sat down at the typewriter again, and personally wrote what he was going to have Barton Ellison open with, fading to a shot of Louise getting into her car with the cop to go home.

  "Louise Dutton isn't here with me tonight," Barton Ellison would solemnly intone. "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 at Six' film after these messages."

  What I should have done, Leonard Cohen thought, was go to Hollywood and be a press agent for the movies.

  ***

  Stanford Fortner Wells III did not own either a newspaper or a radio or television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It might be closed on Sunday, as the comedian had quipped, but it was the nation's fourth largest city. It was also a "good market," in media parlance, which meant that newspapers and radio and television stations were making a lot of money. Since Wells had been in a position to be interested, none of the City of Brotherly Love's five newspapers (the Bulletin, the Ledger, the Herald, the Inquirer, and the Daily News) had come on the market, and only one of its five television stations had. The price they wanted for that didn't seem worth it.

  When Louise called and told him she had accepted an offer to go with WCBL-TV in Philadelphia, therefore, there was not one of his people instantly available on the scene to deliver a report on what his daughter would encounter when she got there.

  In his neat, methodical hand, "Fort" Wells prepared a list of the questions he wished answered, and handed it to his secretary to be telexed to the publisher of the Binghamton, New York, Call-Chronicle, not because it was the newspaper he owned closest to Philadelphia (it was not) but because he knew that Karl Kruger knew his relationship to Louise Dutton. Karl would handle the last question on the list ("Availability adequate, convenient to WCBL-TV, safe, apartment for single, 25-year-old female") with both discretion and awareness of that question's especial importance to the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Wells Newspapers, Inc.

  Karl Kruger's report on Philadelphia, telexed three days later, would not have pleased the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware Valley Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Kruger suspected, correctly, that Stanford Fortner Wells III wanted to know what was wrong with Philadelphia, not get a listing of its many cultural and industrial assets.

  Mr. Wells's first reaction to the report would not have pleased the chamber of commerce either. He judged, from what he read, that Philadelphia was no worse, certainly not as bad as New York City, than other major American cities, and a lot better than most. But in people's minds, it was something like Phoenix, Arizona, or Saint Louis, Missouri, not the Cradle of the American Republic and the nation's fourth largest city. Mr. Wells thought that if he was in Philadelphia (that is, if he owned a newspaper or a television station there), the first thing he would do would be clean out the chamber of commerce from the executive director downward, and hire some people who knew how to blow a city's horn properly.

  Mr. Kruger's report had nothing to say about an apartment. Mr. Wells instructed his secretary to get Mr. Kruger on the horn.

  "I thought maybe you'd be calling, Fort," Mr. Kruger said. "How've you been?"

  "You didn't mention anything about housing, Kurt. Still working on that, are you?"

  "I found, I think, just the place, but I thought it would be easier to talk about it than write it down," Mr. Kruger said. "You got a minute?"

  "Sure. Shoot."

  "How well do you know Philadelphia?"

  "I went there to chase girls when I was at Princeton; I know it."

  "It's changed a lot, I would suppose, from your time," Kruger said. "You know the area near Market Street from City Hall to the bridge over the Delaware?"

  "Around Independence Hall?"

  "Right. Well, that whole section, which they call 'Society Hill,' is pretty much a slum. Been going downhill since Ben Franklin moved away, so to speak."

  "Can you get to the point of this anytime soon?"

  "It's being rehabilitated; they're gutting buildings to the exterior walls, if necessary, and doing them over. Luxuriously. Among the people doing this, you might be interested to know, is the Daye-Nelson Corporation."

  The Daye-Nelson Corporation was something like Wells Newspapers, Inc. Stanford Former Wells III was aware that in Philadelphia, Daye-Nelson owned the Philadelphia Ledger, WGHA-TV, and, he thought he remembered, a couple of suburban weeklies.

  "Come on, Kurt," Fort Wells said, impatiently.

  "They put together a couple of blocks of Society Hill," Kruger explained. "Knocked all the interior walls out, and made apartments. It looks like a row of Revolutionary-era houses, but they are now divided horizontally, instead of vertically. Three one-floor apartments, instead of narrow three-floor houses. You follow me?"

  "Keep going," Wells said.r />
  "Both sides of this street, twelve houses on a side, are all redone that way. And their title people did their homework, and found out that the street between the blocks had never been deeded to the city. It's a private street, in other words. It's more of an alley, actually, but they can, and do, bar the public. They hung a chain across it, and they've got a rent-a-cop there that lowers it only if you live, or have business, there. If you live there, they give you a sticker for your windshield; no sticker and the rent-a-cop won't let you in without you proving you've got business, or are expected. Sort of a doorman on the street."

  "Secure, in other words?"

  "Yeah," Kruger went on. "And they leveled an old warehouse, and made a park out of it, and made a driveway into what used to be the basement for a garage. It's ten, twelve blocks from WCBL, Fort. It would be ideal for your-"

  "Daughter's the word, Kurt," Wells said. "How much?"

  "Not how much, but who," Kruger said. "What Daye-Nelson wants is long-term leases. And I don't think they would want to lease one to a single female."

  "So?"

  "The real estate guy told me they've leased a dozen of them to corporations, where the bosses can spend the night when they have to stay in the city, where they can put up important customers... there's maid service, and a couple of restaurants nearby that deliver."

  "How much, Kurt?"

  "Nine hundred a month, on a five-year lease, with an annual increase tied to inflation. That includes two spaces in the garage."

  "You've seen them I guess?"

  "Very nice, Fort. There's one on a third floor available, that's really nice. You can see the river out the front window, and Independence Hall, at least the roof, out the back."

  "Call the real estate man, Kurt; tell him Wells Newspapers will take it. I'll have Charley Davis handle it from there. Do it now."

  "And what if Louise doesn't like it?"

  "She's a dutiful daughter, Kurt," Wells said, and laughed, "who will recognize a bargain when she sees one."

  ***

  The barrier to Stockton Place consisted of a black-painted aluminum pole, hinged at one end. A neatly lettered sign reading STOCKTON PLACE-PRIVATE PROPERTY-NO THOROUGHFARE hung on short lengths of chain from the pole. A switch in the Colonial-style red-brick guard shack caused electric motors to raise and lower it. The Wackenhut Private Security officer flipped the switch when he saw the yellow Cadillac convertible coming. It was too far away to see the Stockton Place bumper sticker, but there weren't all that many yellow Cadillac convertibles, and he was reasonably certain this had to be the good-looking blonde from the TV, whom he thought of as "6-A."

  The barrier rose smoothly into the air. It was only when the car passed him, moving onto the carefully re-laid cobblestones of Stockton Place, that he saw she was not driving, but that a cop was. And that the convertible was being followed by a police car.

  He was retired from the Philadelphia Police Department, and it automatically registered on him that the numbers on the car identified it as being from the Second District, way the hell and gone across town, in the northeast.

  The first thing he thought was that they'd busted her for driving under the influence, and the lieutenant or whoever had decided it was good public relations, her being on the TV, to warn her and let her go, have her driven home, instead of writing her up and sending her to the Roundhouse to make bail.

  But when the convertible stopped in front of Number Six and she got out, she didn't look drunk, and she walked back to the police car and shook hands with the cop driving it. And 6-A didn't look like the kind of girl who would get drunk, anyway.

  He stepped out of the guard shack and stood by the curb, hoping that when the police car came back out, they would stop and say hello, and he could ask what was going on.

  But the cops just waved at him, and didn't stop.

  Louise Dutton closed the door of 6-A behind her by bumping it with her rear end, and sighed, and then went into her bedroom, and to the bathroom. She saw her brassiere and panties where she'd tossed them on the bed. A plain and ordinary cotton underwear bra and panties, she thought, which she'd taken off to replace with black, filmy, damned-near transparent lingerie bra and panties after Captain Dutch Moffitt had called and she had gone to meet him.

  She leaned close to the mirror. She had not removed her makeup before leaving the studio, and there were streaks on her face, where tears had marred the makeup. She dipped a Kleenex into a jar of cold cream and started wiping at the makeup.

  The door chimes sounded, and she swore.

  Who the hell can that be?

  It was 6-B, who occupied the apartment immediately beneath hers.

  Six-B was male, at least anatomically. He was in his middle twenties, stood about five feet seven, weighed no more than 120 pounds. He paid a great deal of attention to his appearance, and wore, she suspected, Chanel Number Five. His name was Jerome Nelson.

  "I was going to bark," Jerome Nelson said, waving a bottle of Beefeater's gin and one of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch at her. "It's your friendly neighborhood Saint Bernard on a mission of mercy."

  Louise didn't want to see anyone, but it was impossible for her to cut Jerome Nelson off rudely. He wasn't much of a Saint Bernard, Louise thought, but had puppylike eyes, and you don't kick puppies.

  "Hello, Jerome," she said. "Come on in."

  "Gin or scotch?" he asked.

  "I would like a stiff scotch," she said. "Thank you very much. Straight up."

  "You don't have to tell me, of course," he called over his shoulder as he made for her bar. "And I wouldn't think of prying. I will just expire right here on your carpet of terminal curiosity."

  She had to smile.

  "I gather you saw the cops bringing me home?" she asked. "Let me finish getting this crap off my face."

  He came into the bathroom as she was cleaning off what she thought was the last of the makeup, and leaned on the doorjamb.

  "You missed some on your ear," he said, delicately setting two glasses down. "Jerome will fix it."

  He dipped a Kleenex in cold cream and wiped at her ear.

  "There!" he said. "Now tell Mother everything!" She smiled her thanks at him and picked up her drink and took a good swallow.

  "Whatever it was, it was better than the alternative,"

  Jerome said. "What?" "The cops come and haul you off, rather than vice versa," he said.

  "I was a witness to a shooting," Louise said. "A policeman tried to stop a holdup, and was shot. And killed."

  "How awful for you!" Jerome Nelson said.

  "Worse for him," Louise said. "And for his wife and kids."

  "You sound as if you knew him?"

  "Yes," Louise said, "I knew him."

  She took another swallow of her drink, and felt the warmth in her belly.

  He waited for her to go on.

  Fuck him!

  She pushed past him and went into the living room, and leaned on the wall beside a window looking toward the river.

  He floated into the room.

  "Actually, I was going to come calling anyway," he said.

  "Anyway?" she asked, not particularly pleasantly.

  "To tell you that I have discovered we have something in common," he said.

  What, that we both like men? she thought, and was ashamed of herself.

  "Actually," Jerome said. "I'm just a teensy-bit ashamed of myself."

  "Oh?" She wished he-would go away.

  "It will probably come as a surprise to you, but I am what could be called the neighborhood busybody," Jerome said.

  The reason I can't get, or at least, stay, mad at him is because he's always putting himself down; he arouses the maternal instinct in me.

  "Really?" Louise said, mockingly.

  "I'm afraid so," he said. "And I really thought I was onto something with you, when you moved in, I mean."

  "Why was that, Jerome?"

  "Because I know this apartment is leased to Wells Newspapers, Inc.,"
he said. "And because you are really a beautiful woman."

  I've had enough of this guy.

  "Get to the point," Louise said, coldly.

  "So I went to Daddy, and I said, 'Daddy, guess what? Stanford F. Wells has an absolutely gorgeous blonde stashed in 6-A.' "

  "What the hell is this all about, Jerome?" Louise demanded, angrily.

  "And Daddy asked me to describe you, and I did, and he told me," Jerome said.