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

by Men In Blue(lit)

  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 caught 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."

  "You think he's the doer?"

  "That's where I am now," Harris said. "The rent-a-cops told me that he spent the night here a lot; drove Nelson's car-cars-and probably had a key. There are no signs of forcible entry. And there's a burglar alarm. One of Nelson's cars is missing. A Jaguar, by the way, Inspector," Harris said, a naughty look in his eyes. "I put the Jag in NCIC."

  The FBI's National Crime Information Center operated a massive computer listing details of crimes nationwide. If the Jaguar was found somewhere, or even stopped for a traffic violation, the information that it was connected with a crime in Philadelphia would be immediately available to the police officers involved.

  "Screw you, Tony," Wohl said, and laughed.

  "A new one," Harris went on. "An 'XJ6'?"

  "Four-door sedan," Wohl furnished. "A work of art. Twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars."

  Harris's face registered surprise at the price.

  "Police radio is broadcasting the description every half hour," he went on. "I also ordered a subsector search. Nelson's other car is a Ford Fairlane convertible. That's in the garage."

  "Lover's quarrel?" Wohl asked.

  Harris held both palms upward in front of him, and made a gesture, like a scale in balance.

  "Maybe," he said. "That would explain what he did to the victim. I think we have the weapons. They used one of those Chinese knives, you know, looks like a cleaver, but sharp as a razor?"

  Wohl nodded.

  "And another knife, a regular one, a butcher knife with a bone handle, which is probably what he used to stab him."

  "You said 'maybe,' Tony," Wohl said.

  "I'm just guessing, Inspector," Harris said.

  "Go ahead," Wohl said.

  "There was a lot of stuff stolen, or I think so. There's no jewelry to speak of in the apartment... some ordinary cuff links, tie clasps, but nothing worth any money. The victim wore rings, they're gone, we know that. No money in the wallet, or anywhere else that anybody could find. He probably had a watch, or watches, and there's none in there. And there was marks on the bedside table, probably a portable TV, that's gone."

  "Leading up to what?"

  "When two homosexuals get into something like this, they usually don't steal anything, too. I mean, not the boyfriend. They work off the anger and run. So maybe it wasn't the boyfriend."

  "Or the boyfriend might be a cold-blooded sonofa-bitch," Wohl said.

  "Yeah," Harris said, and made the balancing gestures again. "We got people looking for Mr. St. Maury," he went on. "And for the Jaguar. We're trying to find if he had any jewelry that was good enough to be insured, which would give us a description. Captain Quaire said you were going to see his father?"

  "I'm going there as soon as I leave here," Wohl said. "I'll ask."

  "I'd like to talk to him, too," Harris said.

  "I think I'd better see him alone," Wohl thought out loud. "I'll tell him you'll want to see him. Maybe he can come up with some kind of a list of jewelry, expensive stuff in the apartment."

  "You'll get the list?"

  "No. I'll ask him to get it for you. This is your job, Tony. I'm not going to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong."

  Harris nodded.

  "But I would like to look around the apartment," Wohl said. "So when I see him, I'll know what I'm talking about.''

  "Sure," Harris said. He started toward the door. "I'm really sorry, Inspector, about sitting on your car."

  "Forget it," Wohl said.

  ELEVEN

  The building housing the Philadelphia Ledger and the studios of WGHA-TV and WGHA-FM was on Market Street, near the Thirtieth Street Station, and built, Wohl recalled as he drove up to it, about the same time. It wasn't quite the marble Greek palace the Thirtieth Street Station was, but it was a large and imposing building.

  He had been in it once before, as a freshman at St. Joseph's Prep, on a field trip. As he walked up to the entrance, he remembered that very clearly, a busload of boisterous boys, horsing around, getting whacked with a finger behind the ear by the priests when their decorum didn't meet the standards of Young Catholic Gentlemen.

 
; There was a rent-a-cop standing by the revolving door, a receptionist behind a marble counter in the marble-floored lobby, and two more rent-a-cops standing behind her.

  Wohl gave her his business card. It carried the seal of the City of Philadelphia in the upper left-hand corner, the legend POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF PHILADELPHIA in the lower left, and in the center his name, and below that, in slightly smaller letters, STAFF INSPECTOR. In the lower right-hand corner, it said INTERNAL SECURITY DIVISION FRANKLIN SQUARE and listed two telephone numbers.

  It was an impressive card, and usually opened doors to wherever he wanted to go very quickly.

  It made absolutely no impression on the receptionist in the Ledger Building.

  "Do you have an appointment with Mr. Nelson, sir?" she asked, with massive condescension.

  "I believe Mr. Nelson expects me," Wohl said.

  She smiled thinly at him and dialed a number.

  "There's a Mr. Wohl at Reception who says Mr. Nelson expects him."

  There was a pause, then a reply, and she hung up the telephone.

  "I'm sorry, sir, but you don't seem to be on Mr. Nelson's appointment schedule," the receptionist said. "He's a very busy man, as I'm sure-"

  "Call whoever that was back and tell her Inspector Wohl, of the police department," Peter Wohl interrupted her.

  She thought that over a moment, and finally shrugged and dialed the phone again.

  This time, there was a longer pause before she hung up. She took a clipboard from a drawer, and a plastic-coated "Visitor" badge.

  "Sign on the first blank line, please," she said, and turned to one of the rent-a-cops. "Take this gentleman to the tenth floor, please."

  There was another entrance foyer when the elevator door was opened, behind a massive mahogany desk, and for a moment, Wohl thought he was going to have to go through the whole routine again, but a door opened, and a well-dressed, slim, gray-haired woman came through it and smiled at him.

  "I'm Mr. Nelson's secretary, Inspector," she said. "Will you come this way, please?"

  The rent-a-cop slipped into a chair beside the elevator door.

  "I'm sorry about that downstairs," the woman said, smiling at him over her shoulder. "I think maybe you should have told her you were from the police."

  "No problem," Peter said. It would accomplish nothing to tell her he'd given her his card with that information all over it.

  Arthur J. Nelson's outer office, his secretary's office, was furnished with gleaming antiques, a Persian carpet, an oil portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt, and a startlingly lifelike stuffed carcass of a tiger, very skillfully mounted, so that, snarling, it appeared ready to pounce.

  "He'll be with you just as soon as he can," his secretary said. "May I offer you a cup of coffee?"

  "Thank you, no," Peter said, and then his mouth ran away with him. "I like your pussycat."

  "Mr. Nelson took that when he was just out of college," she said, and pointed to a framed photograph on the wall. Wohl went and looked at it. It was of a young man, in sweat-soaked khakis, cradling his rifle in his arm, and resting his foot on a dead tiger, presumably the one now stuffed and mounted.

  "Bengal," the secretary said. "That's a Bengal tiger."

  "Very impressive," Wohl said.

  He examined the tiger, idly curious about how they actually mounted and stuffed something like this.

  What's inside? A wooden frame? A wire one? A plaster casting? Is that red tongue the real thing, preserved somehow? Or what?

  Then he walked across the room and looked through the curtained windows. He could see the roof of Thirtieth Street Station, its classic Greek lines from that angle diluted somewhat by air-conditioning machinery and a surprising forest of radio antennae. He could see the Schuylkill River, with the expressway on this side and the boat houses on the far bank.

  The left of the paneled double doors to Arthur J. Nelson's office opened, and four men filed out. They all seemed determined to smile, Wohl thought idly, and then he thought they had probably just had their asses eaten out.

  A handsome man wearing a blue blazer and gray trousers appeared in the door. He was much older, of course, than the young man in the tiger photograph, and heavier, and there was now a perfectly trimmed, snow-white mustache on his lip, but Wohl had no doubt that it was Arthur J. Nelson.

  Formidable, Wohl thought.

  Arthur J. Nelson studied Wohl for a moment, carefully.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting, Inspector," he said. "Won't you please come in?"

  He waited at the door for Wohl and put out his hand. It was firm.

  "Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Nelson," Wohl said. "May I offer my condolences?"

  "Yes, you can, and that's very kind of you," Nelson said, as he led Wohl into his office. "But frankly, what I would prefer is a report that you found proof positive who the animal was who killed my son, and that he resisted arrest and is no longer among the living."

  Wohl was taken momentarily aback.

  What the hell. Any father would feel that way. This man is accustomed to saying exactly what he's thinking.

  "I'm about to have a drink," Nelson said. "Will you join me? Or is that against the rules?"

  "I'd like a drink," Peter said. "Thank you."

  "I drink single-malt scotch with a touch of water," Nelson said. "But there is, of course, anything else."

  "That would be fine, sir," Peter said.

  Nelson went to a bar set into the bookcases lining one wall of his office. Peter looked around the room. A second wall was glass, offering the same view of the Schuylkill he had seen outside. The other walls were covered with mounted animal heads and photographs of Arthur J. Nelson with various distinguished and/or famous people, including the sitting president of the United States. There was one of Nelson with the governor of Pennsylvania, but not, Peter noticed, one of His Honor the Mayor Carlucci.

  Nelson crossed the room to where Peter stood and handed him a squat, octagonal crystal glass. There was no ice.

  "Some people don't like it," Nelson said. "Take a sip. If you don't like it, say so."

  Wohl sipped. It was heavy, but pleasant.

  "Very nice," he said. "I like it. Thank you."

  "I was shooting stag in Scotland, what, ten years ago. The gillie drank it. I asked him, and he told me about it. Now I have them ship it to me. All the scotch you get here, you know, is a blend."

  "It's nice," Peter said.

  "Here's to vigilante justice, Inspector," Nelson said.

  "I'm not sure I can drink to that, sir," Peter said.

  "You can't, but I can," Nelson said. "I didn't mean to put you on a spot."

  "If I wasn't here officially," Peter said, "maybe I would."

  "If you had lost your only son, Inspector, like I lost mine, you certainly would. When something like this happens, terms like 'justice' and 'due process' seem abstract. What you want is vengeance."

  "I was about to say I know how you feel," Peter said. "But of course, I don't. I can't. All I can say is that we'll do everything humanly possible to find whoever took your son's life."

  "If I ask a straight question, will I get a straight answer?"

  "I'll try, sir."

  "How do you cops handle it psychologically when you do catch somebody you know is guilty of doing something horrible, obscene, unhuman like this, only to see him walk out of a courtroom a free man because of some minor point of law, or some bleeding heart on the bench?"

  "The whole thing is a system, sir," Peter said, after a moment. "The police, catching the doer, the perpetrator, are only part of the system. We do the best we can. It's not our fault when another part of the system fails to do what it should."

  "I have every confidence that you.'11 find whoever it was who hacked my son to death," Nelson said. "And then we both know what will happen. It will, after a long while, get into a courtroom, where some asshole of a lawyer will try every trick in the business to get him off. And if he doesn't, if the jury finds him guilty,
and the judge has the balls to sentence him to the electric chair, he'll appeal, for ten years or so, and the odds are some yellow-livered sonofabitch of a governor will commute his sentence to life. I'm sure you know what it costs to keep a man in jail. About twice what it costs to send a kid to an Ivy League college. The taxpayers will provide this animal with three meals a day, and a warm place to sleep for the rest of his life."