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

by Men In Blue(lit)

  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.

  He had since parked his car himself.

  The scene annoyed Barbara further, although he resolved it with money, to get it over with.

  SEVEN

  When she saw that Peter Wohl was leading her to Ristorante Alfredo, Barbara Crowley protested.

  "Peter, it's so expensive!"

  She sounds like my mother, Peter thought.

  "Well, I'll just stiff my ex-wife on her alimony," he said, as he opened the door to Ristorante Alfredo. "Tell her to have the kids get a job, too."

  Barbara, visibly, did not think that was funny. There was no ex-wife and no kids, but it was not the sort of thing Barbara thought you should joke about, particularly when there was someone who could hear and might not understand. She hadn't thought it was funny the last time he'd made his little joke, and, to judge by her face, it had not improved with age.

  The headwaiter was a tall, silver-haired man, who had heard.

  "Have you a reservation, sir?" he asked.

  "No, but it doesn't look like you have many, either,"

  Peter said, waving in the general direction of the half-empty dining room.

  The headwaiter looked toward the bar, where a stout man in his early thirties sat at the bar. He was wearing an expensive suit, and his black hair was expensively cut and arranged, almost successfully, to conceal a rapidly receding hairline.

  His name was Ricco Baltazari, and the restaurant and bar licenses had been issued in his name. It was actually owned by a man named Vincenzo Savarese, who; for tax purposes, and because it's hard for a convicted felon to get a liquor license, had Baltazari stand in for him.

  Ricco Baltazari had taken in the whole confrontation. There was nothing he would have liked better than to have the fucking cop thrown the fuck out-what a hell of a nerve, coming to a class joint like this with no tie-but instead, with barely visible moves of his massive head, he signaled that Wohl was to be given a table. It's always better to back away from a confrontation with a fucking cop, and this fucking cop was an inspector, and Mr. Savarese was in the back, having dinner with his wife and her sister, and it was better not to risk doing anything that would cause a disturbance.

  Besides, he had seen in Gentlemen's Quarterly where turtlenecks were making a comeback. It wasn't like the fucking cop was wearing a fucking shirt and no necktie. A turtleneck was different.

  "Spaghetti and meatballs?" Peter Wohl asked, when they had been shown to a table covered with crisp linen and an impressive array of crystal and silverware, and handed large menus. "Or maybe some lasagna? Or would you like me to slip the waiter a couple of bucks and have him sing 'Santa Lucia' while you make up your mind?"

  Barbara didn't think that was witty, either.

  "I don't know why you come to these places, if you really don't like them."

  "The mob serves the best food in Philadelphia," Peter said. "I thought everybody knew that."

  Barbara decided to let it drop.

  "Well, everything on here looks good," she said, with a determined smile.

  Wohl looked at her, rather than at the menu. He knew what he was going to eat: First some cherrystone clams, and then veal Marsala.

  She is a good-looking girl. She's intelligent. She's got a good job. She even tolerates me, which means she probably understands me. On a scale of one to ten, she's an eight in bed. What I should do is marry her, and buy a house somewhere and start raising babies. But I don't want to.

  She asked him what he was going to have, and he told her, and she said that sounded fine, she would have the same thing.

  "Let's have a bottle of wine," Peter said, and opened the wine list and selected an Italian wine whose name he remembered. He pointed out the label to Barbara and asked if that was all right with her. It was fine with her.

  Maybe what she needs to turn me on is a little streak of bitchiness, a little streak of not-so-tolerant-and-under-standing.

  He was nearly through the bottle of wine, and halfway through the veal Marsala, when he looked up and saw Vincenzo Savarese approaching the table.

  Vincenzo Savarese was sixty-three years old. What was left of his hair was silver and combed straight back over his ears. His face bore marks of childhood acne. He was wearing a double-breasted brown pin-striped suit, and there was a diamond stickpin in his necktie. He was trailed by two almost identical women in black dresses, his wife and her sister.

  Vincenzo Savarese's photo was mounted, very near the top, on the wall chart of known organized crime members the Philadelphia Police Department maintained in the Organized Crime unit.

  "I don't mean to disturb your dinner, Inspector," Vincenzo Savarese said. "Keep your seat."

  Wohl stood up, but said nothing.

  "I just wanted to tell you we heard about what happened to Captain Moffitt, and we're sorry," Vincenzo Savarese said.

  "My heart goes out to his mother," one of the women said.

  Wohl wasn't absolutely sure whether it was Savarese's wife, or his sister-in-law. Looking at the woman, he said, "Thank you."

  "I was on a retreat with Mrs. Moffitt, the mother," the woman went on. "At Blessed Sacrament."

  Wohl nodded.

  Savarese nodded, and took the woman's arm and led them out of the dining room.

  "Who was that?" Barbara Crowley asked.

  "His name is Vincenzo Savarese," Wohl said, evenly. "He owns this place."

  "I thought you said the mob owns it."

  "It does," Wohl said.

  "Then why? Why did he do that?"

  "He probably meant it, in his own perverse way," Wohl said. "He probably thought Dutch was a fellow man of honor. The mob is big on honor."

  "I saw that on TV," Barbara said.

  He looked at her.

  "About Captain Moffitt. I wasn't going to bring it up unless you did," Barbara said. "But I suppose that's what's wrong, isn't it?"

  "I didn't know anything was wrong," Wohl said.

  "Have it your way, Peter," Barbara said.

  "No, you tell me, what's wrong?"

  "You're wearing a turtleneck sweater, and you're driving the Jaguar," she said. "You always do that when something went wrong at work; it's as if-as if it's a symbol, that you don't want to be a cop. At least then. And then you got into it with the kid who wanted to park your car, and then the headwaiter here..."

  "That's very interesting," he said.

  "Now, I'm sorry I said it," Barbara said.

  "No, I mean it. I didn't know I was that transparent."

  "I know you pretty well, Peter," she said.

  "You want to know what's really bothering me?" Wohl asked.

  "Only if you want to tell me," she said.

  "My parents called, just before I went to pick you up," he said. "They told me I should go by Jeannie Moffitt's house tonight. Tonight's for close friends. Tomorrow, they'll have the wake. And they're right, of course. I should, but I didn't want to go, and I didn't."

  "You were a friend of Dutch Moffitt's," Barbara said. "Why don't you want to go?"

  "Did I tell you that I went in on the assist?"

  "You were there?" she asked. She seemed more sympathetic than surprised.

  He nodded. "I was a couple of blocks away. When I got there, Dutch was still slumped against the wall of the Waikiki Diner."

  "You didn't tell me anything," Barbara said. It was, he decided, a statement of fact, rather than a reproof.

  "There's an eyewitness, that woman from Channel Nine, Louise Dutton," Wohl said.

  "I saw her," Barbara said. "When she was on TV talking about it."

  "I thi
nk she had something going with Dutch," Wohl said. "I'll bet on it, as a matter of fact."

  "Oh, my!" Barbara said. "And is it going to come out? Will his wife find out?"

  "No, I don't think so," Wohl said. "The commissioner has assigned that splendid police officer, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, to see that 'nothing awkward develops.' "

  "You mean, the commissioner knows about Captain Moffitt and that woman?''

  "Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, with the good of the department ever foremost in his mind, told him," Wohl said.

  Barbara Crowley laid her hand on his.

  "I probably shouldn't tell you this," she said. "But one of the main reasons I like you is that you are really a moral man, Peter. You really think about right and wrong.''

  "And all this time, I thought it was my Jaguar," he said.

  "I hate your Jaguar," she said.

  "The reason, more or less subconsciously, that I wore the turtleneck and drove the Jaguar, was that I can't go play the role of the bereaved close friend of the family wearing a turtleneck and driving the Jaguar."

  "I thought that maybe it was because you didn't want to take me with you," Barbara said.

  "You didn't want to go over there," Peter said.

  "No, but you didn't know that," Barbara said. When he looked at her in surprise, she went on: "You could go home and change. I'll go over there with you, if you would like. If you think I would be welcome."

  "Don't be silly, of course you'd be welcome," he said.

  "People might get the idea, that if I went there with you, I was your girl friend."

  "I don't think that's much of a secret, is it?" Peter said. "But I'm not really up to going there. I suppose this makes me a moral coward, but I don't want to look at Jeannie's face, or the kids'," he said. "But thank you, Barbara."

  "What it makes you is honest," Barbara said, and laid her hand on his. Then she added, "We could go to my place."

  Barbara lived in a three-room apartment on the top floor of one of the red-brick buildings at the hospital. It was roomy and comfortable.

  She really thought the reason I wasn't going over to the house was because taking her there would be one more reluctant step on our slow, but inexorable march to the altar. I squirmed out of that, and now she is offering me comfort, in the way women have comforted men since they came home with dinosaur bites.

  "What I think I will do is take you home, apologize for my lousy attitude-"

  "Don't be silly, Peter," Barbara interrupted.

  "And then go home and get my uniform out of the bag so that I will remember to get it pressed in the morning."

  "Your uniform?"

  "Dutch was killed in the line of duty," Peter said. "There will be, the day after tomorrow, a splendiferous ceremony at Saint Dominic's. I will be there, in uniform, which, my mother and dad hope, will be accepted as a gesture of my respect overwhelming my bad manners for not joining the other close friends at the house tonight."

  He saw a question forming in her eyes, but she didn't, after a just perceptible hesitation, ask it. Instead, she said, "I don't think I've ever seen you in your uniform."

  "Very spiffy," he said. "When I wear my uniform, I have to fight to preserve my virtue. It drives the girls wild."

  "I'll bet you look very nice in a uniform," Barbara said.

  He looked for and found the waiter and waved him over and called for the check.

  There would be no check, the waiter said. It was Mr. Savarese's pleasure.

  ***

  Barbara insisted in going home in a cab. She wasn't mad, she assured him, but she was tired and he was tired, and they both had had bad days and a lot to do tomorrow, and a cab was easier, and made sense.

  She kissed him quickly, and got in a cab and was gone. He went to the parking garage and reclaimed the Jaguar.

  As soon as he got behind the wheel, Peter Wohl began to regret not having gone to her apartment with Barbara. For one thing, he had learned that turning down an offer of sexual favors was not a good way to maintain a good relationship with a female. They could have headaches, or for other reasons be temporarily out of action, but the privilege was not reciprocal. He had probably hurt her feelings, or angered her (even if she didn't let it show), or both, by leaving her. He was sorry to have done that, for Barbara was a good woman.

  Less nobly, he realized that a piece of ass would probably be just what the doctor would order for what ailed him. Seeing Dutch slumped dead against the wall had affected him more than he liked to admit. And looking down Louise Dutton's dressing gown, even if she had caught him at it, and made an ass of him, had aroused him. Whatever else could or would be said about the TV lady, she really had a set of perfect teats.

  He had been driving without thinking about where he was going. When he oriented himself, he saw he was on Market Street, west of the Schuylkill River, just past Thirtieth Street Station. That wasn't far from Barbara's place.

  What the hell am I doing ? I really don't want to see her any more tonight.

  He was also, he realized, just a couple of blocks away from the Adelphia Hotel.

  There was a bar off the lobby of the Adelphia Hotel, in which, from time to time, he had found females sitting who were amenable to a dalliance; often guests of the hotel who, he supposed, were more prone to fool around while in Philadelphia than they would back in Pittsburgh; and sometimes what he thought of as Strawbridge & Clothier women, the upper crust of Philadelphia and the Main Line, who, if the moon was right, could as easily be talked out of their fashionable clothing.

  And even if there were no females, the bar was dark, and he was not known to the bartenders as a cop, and there was a guy who played the piano.

  He would see what developed naturally. The worst possible scenario would be no available women. In which case, he would have a couple drinks and listen to the guy play the piano and then do what he probably should have done anyway, go home. He really did have to remember to get his uniform out of the zipper bag in the closet and get it pressed tomorrow.

  His eyes had barely adjusted to the darkness of the bar when a male voice spoke in his ear. "Can I buy you a drink?"

  He turned to see who had made the offer. The face was familiar, but he couldn't immediately put a name, or an identification, to it.

  "It is you, Inspector? I mean... you are Inspector Wohl, aren't you?"

  It came together. Dutch's nephew. He had met the kid that afternoon, outside Dutch's house.

  "Let me buy you one," Wohl said, smiling and offering his hand. "Matt Moffitt, right?"

  "Matt Payne," the boy said. "I was adopted."

  "Yeah, I heard something about that," Wohl said. "Sorry."

  "No problem," Matt said.

  The bartender appeared.

  "I don't know what he wants," Wohl said, "but Johnnie Red and soda for me."

  "The same," Matt said.

  "You old enough?" the bartender challenged. "You got a driver's license?"

  Matt handed it over. The bartender eyed it dubiously, then asked Matt for his birth date. Finally he shrugged, and went to make the drinks.

  "They lose their licenses," Wohl said. "You can't blame them."

  When the drinks came, Matt laid a twenty on the bar.

  "Hey, I'll get these," Wohl said.

  "My pleasure," Matt Payne said. He picked up his glass, raised it, and said, "Dutch."

  "Dutch," Wohl repeated, and raised his glass.

  "I just came from the Moffitts'," Matt said. "After that, I needed this."

  "I was supposed to be there. But I got tied up," Wohl said. "I couldn't get away. I'll go by Marshutz & Sons, to the wake, tomorrow."

  "It was pretty awful," Matt said.

  "Why do you say that?" Wohl asked.

  "The kids, for one thing, my cousins," Matt said. "Losing their father is really tough on them. And my grandmother was a flaming pain in the ass, for another. She was a real bitch toward my mother.''

  "What?" Wohl asked. "Why?"

 
; "My grandmother thinks what my mother should have done when my father got killed was turn into a professional widow, like she is. Instead, she married my stepfather. ''

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "Out of the church," Matt said. "Mother married one of those heathen Protestant Episcopals. And then Mother converted herself, and took me with her. And then let my stepfather adopt me."