Special Operations boh-2

by W. E. B Griffin

  "I better get over to the FOP," he said. "You finish your dinner. I' ll catch a cab. Or run."

  When he was gone, Wohl said, "He's a very nice young man, soaking wet behind the ears, but very nice."

  "I think I should tell you, Inspector," Amy said, "that I'm not thrilled with his choice of career."

  "I would be very surprised if you were," Wohl said. "Your mother must really be upset."

  Damn it, you weren't supposed to agree with me!

  "She is," Amy said. "I had lunch with her today."

  "I feel a little sorry for myself, too," Wohl said. "Dennis Coughlin sent him to me, with the unspoken, but very obvious, implication that I am to look after him. I think Coughlin is probably as unhappy as you and your family about his taking the job."

  He looked at her, and when she didn't reply, added, "He's twenty-one years old, Dr. Payne. I suspect that he has been very humiliated by having failed the Marine Corps physical. He has decided he wants to be a policeman, and I don't think there's anything anyone can do, or could have done to dissuade him."

  I don't need you to explain that to me, damn you again!

  "You don't agree?" Wohl asked.

  "I suppose that's true," Amy said. "Where's he going tonight? What's the Eff Oh Pee?"

  "Fraternal Order of Police," Wohl said. "They have a building on Spring Garden, just off Broad. He's meeting two of my men there. They' re going to look for a man we think is connected with a couple of burglaries in Chestnut Hill. I told them to take Matt with them, to give him an idea how things are, on the street."

  "Oh," she said.

  "That chocolate whateveritis looks good," Wohl said. "Would you like a piece?"

  "No, thank you," Amy snipped. "Nothing for me, thank you."

  "You don't mind if I do?"

  "No, of course not," Amy said.

  Damn this man, he has a skin like an elephant, the smug sonofabitch!

  ****

  Matt got out of the taxi in front of the Fraternal Order of Police Building on Spring Garden Street and looked at his watch. He was five minutes late.

  Damn! he thought, and then Double Damn, either I've got the wrong place, or this place is closed!

  Then, on the right corner of the building, he saw movement, a couple going into a door. He walked to it, and saw there were stairs and went down them. He had just relaxed with the realization that he had found "the bar at the FOP," even if five minutes late, when a large man stepped in front of him.

  "This is a private club, fella," he said.

  "I'm meeting someone," Matt replied. "Officer McFadden."

  The man looked at him dubiously, but after a moment stepped out of his way, and waved him into the room.

  Matt wondered how one joined the FOP; he would have to ask.

  The room was dark and noisy. There was a dance floor crowded with people and what he thought at first was a band, but quickly realized was a phonograph playing records, very loudly, through enormous speakers. At the far end of the room, he saw a bar, and made his way toward it.

  He found Officers McFadden and Martinez standing at the bar, at the right of it.

  "Sorry to be late," Matt said.

  "We was just starting to wonder where you were," Charley McFadden said. "Talking about you, as a matter of fact."

  "You got to learn to be on time," Jesus Martinez said.

  "He said he was sorry, Hay-zus," McFadden defended him.

  McFadden, Matt saw, was drinking Ortleib's beer, from the bottle. Martinez had what looked like a glass of water.

  "You want a beer, Matt?"

  "Please," Matt said. "Ortleib's."

  "Hey, Charley," McFadden called to the bartender. "Give us another round here!"

  "Two beers and a glass of water?" the bartender said. "Or is Jesus still working on the one he has, taking it easy?"

  "Call him, Hay-zus," McFadden said. "He likes that better. Charley, say hello to Matt Payne."

  Matt was at the moment distracted by something to his right. A woman leaned up off her bar stool, supported herself with one hand on the bar, and threw an empty cigarette package into a plastic garbage can behind the bar. In doing so, her dress top fell open, and her brassiere came into view. Her brassiere was one that Matt had yet to see in the flesh, but had seen inPlayboy, Penthouse, and other magazines of the type young men buy for the high literary content of their articles and fiction.

  It was black, lacy, and instead of the cloth hemispheres of an ordinary brassiere, this one had sort of half hemispheres, on the bottom only, which presented the upper portion of the breast to Matt's view, including the nipple.

  Matt found this very interesting, and was grossly embarrassed when the woman glanced his way, saw him looking, said "Hi!" and then returned to her bar stool.

  She was old, he thought, at least thirty-five, and she had caught him looking down her dress.

  Oh, shit! If she says something…

  "Matt, say hello to Charley Castel," Charley McFadden repeated.

  Matt offered his hand to Charley Castel. "How are you?"

  "Matt's out with us in Special Operations," Charley said.

  "Is that so?" Charley Castel said.

  "He just got out of the Academy," Jesus Martinez offered.

  Thanks a lot, pal, Matt thought.

  "Is that so?" Charley Castel repeated. "Well, welcome to the job, Matt."

  "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" a female voice said in Matt's ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it was the woman who had caught him peering down her dress.

  "Yeah, why not?" Charley said, chuckling. "Matt, this is Lorraine Witzell, Lorraine, this is Matt Payne."

  "How are you, Matt Payne?" Lorraine said, putting her arm between Matt and Charley to shake his hand, which action served to cause her breast to press against Matt's arm. "Is that short for Matthew, or what?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Matt said.

  "Yes, ma'am," Jesus Martinez parroted sarcastically.

  "You're sweet," Lorraine Witzell said to Matt, looking into his eyes and not letting go of his hand. "Did I hear Charley say you've been assigned to Special Operations?"

  "That's right," Matt said.

  For an older woman, she's really not too bad-looking. And she either didn't really catch me looking down her dress, or, Jesus, she doesn't care.

  "That should be an interesting assignment," Lorraine said.

  "We're on the job now, Lorraine," Charley McFadden said. "We was just talking about that."

  "You're working plainclothes?" she asked. Matt sensed the question was directed to him, but Charley answered it.

  "We're looking for a fag burglar," Charley replied. "Been hitting some rich woman in Chestnut Hill."

  "Well, if you're going to work the fag joints," Lorraine said, again directly to Matt, "you better keep your hand you-know-where, and I don't mean on your gun. They're going to love you!"

  "What we was talking about," Charley McFadden said, "is maybe splitting up. Hay-zus taking the unmarked car-he don't drink, and it's better that way-and you and me go together."

  "Whatever you say, Charley," Matt said.

  "You got your car? Mine's a dog."

  "I came in a cab," Matt said.

  "Oh," Charley said.

  Matt saw the look of disappointment on McFadden's face.

  "But I don't live far; getting it wouldn't be any trouble."

  McFadden's disappointment diminished.

  "What I was thinking was that in a car like yours, we could cruise better," McFadden said.

  "I understand," Matt said. "You mean it's the sort of car a fag would drive?"

  "I didn't say that," McFadden said, embarrassed. "But, no offense, yeah."

  "What kind of car do you have?" Lorraine asked.

  "A Porsche 911T," Charley answered for him.

  "Oh, they're darling!" Lorraine said, clutching Charley's arm high up under the armpit, which also caused her breast to press against his arm again.

  Wh
ich caused a physical reaction in Matt Payne that he would rather not have had under the circumstances, at this particular point in space and time.

  "Where do you live, Payne?" Jesus Martinez asked.

  "On Rittenhouse Square," Matt said.

  "Figures," Martinez said. "Let's get the hell out of here, somebody's liable to spot that car in the parking lot and start asking questions."

  "To which we answer, we were picking up Payne, and you were drinking water," McFadden replied, but Matt saw that he picked up his fresh Ortleib's and drank half of it.

  "Hay-zus is a worrier," Charley said to Matt.

  "You better be glad I am," Martinez replied.

  Lorraine Witzell pushed between Charley and Matt to sit her glass on the bar, which served to place her rear end against Matt's groin and the physiological phenomenon he would have rather not had manifesting itself at that moment. It didn't seem to bother Lorraine Witzell at all; quite the contrary. She seemed to be backing harder against it.

  Matt took a pull at his bottle of Ortleib's.

  "I'm ready," he said, signifying his willingness to leave. "Anytime."

  Lorraine Witzell chuckled deep in her throat.

  "Well," she said, "if it turns out to be a dull night, come on back. I'll probably be here."

  FIFTEEN

  At quarter to one, Officer Charley McFadden pulled Matt Payne's Porsche 911T to the curb before a row house on Fitzgerald Street, not far from Methodist Hospital, in South Philadelphia.

  "It happens that way sometimes," Charley said to Matt. "Sometimes you can go out and find who you're looking for easy as hell. And other times, it's like this. We'll catch the bastard. Hay-zus will turn up something."

  "Yeah," Matt said.

  "And you got the fag tour, right?" Charley said. "So it wasn't a complete waste of time, right?"

  "It was… educational," Matt said, just a little thickly.

  "And we wasn't in all of them," McFadden laughed. "Maybe half."

  "There seem to be more of those places than I would have thought possible," Matt said, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

  "You all right to drive?"

  "Fine," Matt said.

  "You're welcome to sleep on the couch here," Charley offered.

  "I'm all right," Matt insisted.

  "Well, drive careful, huh? You don't want to fuck up a car like this."

  "I'll be careful," Matt said, and got out of the car and walked around the back.

  "We'll get the bastard," Charley McFadden repeated. "And what the hell, we were on overtime, right?"

  "Right," Matt said. "Good night, Charley. See you in the morning."

  He started the engine, returned to South Broad Street, and pointed the nose toward Willy Penn, surveying the city from atop City Hall.

  Matt had asked Charley McFadden about "that woman you introduced me to in the FOP" five minutes after they had picked up the Porsche, and were headed into West Philadelphia.

  "She works for the district attorney," Charley said. "They call her the shark."

  "Why?"

  "Well, she likes cops," Charley said. "Young cops in particular. What did she do, grab your joint?"

  "No. Nothing like that," Matt said. "I was just curious, that's all."

  "I'm surprised," Charley said. "She looked pretty interested, to me."

  "She seemed to know a good deal about the police, about police work."

  "As much as any cop," Charley had said.

  Matt reached City Hall, and drove around it, and up North Broad to Spring Garden and into the FOP parking lot.

  The place was still crowded. He made his way to the bar and ordered a scotch and soda. He had a good deal to drink, some of the drinks paid for by either the proprietors of the bars they visited, or put in front of him by the bartender, who had then said, "The tall fellow at the end of the bar," or something like that.

  He saw Lorraine Witzell at the far end of the bar, with three men standing around her.

  Well, it was dumb coming here in the first place.

  And then fingers grazed his neck.

  "I was beginning to think you'd found something more interesting to do," Lorraine Witzell said, as she slid onto the bar stool behind, which action caused first one of her knees and then the other to graze his crotch.

  "May I buy you a drink?" Matt said, very carefully.

  Lorraine Witzell looked at him and smiled.

  "You can, but what I think would make a lot more sense, baby, would be for Lorraine to take you home and get some coffee into you. You can take me for a ride in your Porsche some other time. It'll be safe in the parking lot here."

  "I'm all right to drive," Matt insisted, somewhat indignantly, as Lorraine led him across the FOP bar and up the stairs to the street.

  ****

  Peter Wohl walked to his car, and stood outside the door until he saw Dr. Amelia Payne's Buick station wagon come out of the alley beside the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building and drive past him.

  He raised his hand in a wave, but Dr. Payne either did not see it, or ignored it. He shrugged and got in the car, started it up, and reached for the microphone in the glove compartment, realizing only then that was the wrong radio. He put the microphone back, and fumbled around on the seat for the microphone that would give him access to the Highway Band.

  He became aware that a car had pulled parallel to him and stopped. He turned to look, and found a pair of Highway Patrolmen looking at him from the front seat of an unmarked Highway car.

  He waved and smiled. There was no response from either cop, but the car moved off.

  They either didn't recognize me, or they did and aren't in a particularly friendly mood toward the sonofabitch who took Highway away from Good Ol' Mike and gave it to Dave Pekach.

  He picked up the microphone, and as he did, smiled.

  "Highway One, this is S-Sam One."

  "Highway One," Pekach came back immediately. Wohl was not surprised that Pekach was up and riding around. Not only was he new to the job, and conscientious, but Pekach was used to working nights; it would take him a week, maybe longer, to get used to the idea that the Commander of Highway worked the day shift.

  "I'm on Rittenhouse Square, David. Where are you? Where could we meet?"

  Wohl chuckled. The brake lights on the unmarked Highway car flashed on, and the car slowed momentarily. In what he was sure was an involuntary reflex action, the driver had hit the brakes when he heard the New Boss calling Highway One. He was sure he could read the driver's mind:I thought that was him. Now what's the bastard up to?

  "I'm on the expressway about a mile from the Manayunk Bridge," Pekach said. "You name it."

  "You know where I live?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "I'll meet you there," Wohl said, and laid the microphone down.

  Pekach, in full uniform, complete to motorcyclist's boots and Sam Browne belt festooned with shiny cartridges, was leaning on a Highway blue-and-white on the cobblestones before Wohl's garage apartment when Wohl got there.

  I wouldn't be surprised if he was working the expressway with radar for speeders,Wohl thought, and was immediately sorry. That was both unkind and not true. What David Pekach was doing was what he would have done himself in the circumstances, making the point that Highway could expect to find the boss riding around at midnight, and the second, equally important point, that he was not sneaking around in an unmarked car, but in uniform and in a blue-and-white.

  Wohl pulled the nose of the LTD up to the garage and got out.

  "Let me put this away, David," he called. "And then I'll buy you a beer. Long night?"

  "I thought it was a good idea to ride around," Pekach said.

  "So do I," Wohl said, as he unlocked the doors and swung them open. " But it's after midnight."

  He put the car in the garage, and then touched Pekach's arm as he led him up the stairs to the apartment.

  "You seen the papers?" Pekach said.

  "No, should I have?"

/>   "Yeah, I think so. I brought you theBulletin and theLedger. "

  "Thank you," Wohl said. "It wouldn't take a minute to make coffee."

  "I'm coffeed out; beer would be fine."

  "Sit," Wohl said, pointing to the couch beneath the oil painting of the voluptuous nude, and went to the refrigerator and came back with two bottles of Schlitz. "Glass?"

  "This is fine," Pekach said, "thank you."

  "Nothing on Elizabeth Woodham?" Wohl asked. "I expect I would have heard…"

  David Pekach shook his head.

  "Not a damn thing," he said. "I was so frustrated I actually wrote a speeding ticket."

  "Really?" Wohl chuckled.

  "Sonofabitch came by me at about eighty, as if I wasn't there. I thought maybe he was drunk, so I pulled him over. He was sober. Just in a hurry."

  "It's been a long time since I wrote a ticket," Wohl said.

  "When he saw he was going to get a ticket," Pekach said, "he got nasty. He said he was surprised a captain would be out getting people for something like speeding when we had a serial rapist and a kidnapped woman on our hands."

  "Ouch," Wohl said.

  "I felt like belting the sonofabitch," Pekach said. "That was just before you called."

  "I had a disturbing session just before I called you," Wohl said. " With a psychiatrist. You've seen that kid hanging around Bustleton and Bowler? Payne?"

  "He's Dutch's nephew or something?"

  "Yeah. Well, his sister. I let her read the files and asked her for a profile."

  "And?"

  "Not much that'll help us find him, I'm afraid. But she said-the way she put it was 'slippery slope'-that once somebody like this doer goes over the edge, commits the first act, starts to act out his fantasies, it's a slippery slope."

  "Huh," Pekach said.

  "Meaning that he's unable to stop, and starts to think of himself as invincible, starts to think, in other words, that he can get away with anything. Worse, that to get the same charge, the same satisfaction, he has to get deeper and deeper into his fantasies."

  "Meaning, she doesn't think we're going to get the Woodham woman back alive?"

  "No, she doesn't," Peter said. "And worse, that because he's starting to think he's invincible, that he's not going to get caught, that he' ll go after somebody else, a new conquest, more quickly than he has before."